Sonos Era 100 review: Lets you feel the music

12:21 PM

01 minute read

Imagine this: It’s Monday morning in frosty Delhi, the temperature outside is barely 5 degrees, and you are struggling to wake up and leave for the office. And then even before sipping that first cup of coffee, you give a command “Hey Sonos – Play”. Within seconds your favorite song is filling your room, giving your ears a warm tingle and clearing your Monday blues. Of late, this is what Sonos Era 100 has been doing for me.

You see, this is what my mornings on weekdays have looked like for the past few weeks. I love music and my choice of music depends on my mood. But irrespective of my mood – Monday blues, mellow Sunday, or fun Friday – the Sonos Era 100 has been keeping me good company in the last 10-odd days. In other words, I love it.

So even before we delve into this review, you already know what I think of the Era 100. A key question remains: It is good, but is it worth Rs 29,999? Because even as I love Sonos Era 100, there are still a few things that give me pause before outrightly recommending it.

More on this in a while. Before that a quick look at its specifications: The Sonos Era 100 comes with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility and has support for Bluetooth 5. For audio processing, it has a quad-core CPU, and it weighs 2 kilograms, which is not light but also not that heavy as far as bookshelf speakers are concerned.

Sonos Era 100 design and setup

In the world of smart speakers, most brands are sticking to minimalist design. Bose, Google, Apple, and even Amazon. And, of course, Sonos. The Era 100 has a plain – but similar to what is known as quiet luxury – cylindrical design. In this review, we are featuring the Era 100 in black color, although Sonos also sells it in white.

On top, the Era 100 has touch buttons for volume control, voice control, and music playback controls. At the bottom rests the power adaptor. Everything feels neatly put together with around 90 percent of the cylindrical surface covered in mesh. The simple and neutral design means that the Era 100 gently fits into the aesthetics of a room. It is elegant and whether you keep it on the TV console, or a bookshelf, or just plainly on a table in some nook, it will add to the decor and not disrupt it.

Sonos is a company that has an upmarket image and the build quality of the Era 100 reflects that. At 2.02 kg, it may feel a tad hefty for its diminutive size, but as the saying goes, great power often comes in sturdy packages. Although you are unlikely to be bothered by the heft or size. You see, this is not a portable speaker. You need to connect it to a power socket. So place it where you want it, and you are done. Keeping it in one place also helps with the speaker’s audio optimization because the speaker can use the room-scanning feature to tune the soundstage better.

This brings me to the setting up process. Setting up the Sonos Era 100 is easy. First, you need to plug in the cable, and then download the Sonos app from the app store. I connected the Sonos Era 100 with the iOS app. The app then takes you through the setup process, which includes connecting to Wi-Fi, scanning for available devices, and selecting the option – asking where the device has been placed, like in the living room or bedroom, followed by a quick scan for better soundstage.

Once the setup is complete, the app offers options for music like Sonos’s own radio stations. Or you can directly play songs from the music apps like Apple Music and Spotify. To control the music, there is a voice command built-in. Though Sonos Era 100 also supports Alexa, I used the built-in ‘Hey Sonos’ command.

Sonos Era 100 – Using It

For me, this is the best part of the review because now I can detail how the Era 100 made me not just listen to music but feel it and experience it in all its exquisite glory.

Some specific examples follow. I love Ed Sheeran and Beyonce’s duet Perfect. Every time I played this song with Era 100, I was able to experience all the subtle layers in this song – the vocals, the strings of the guitar, and as I experienced the music I imagined the singers gently swaying in the recording booth, vibing with the music they were recording.

It is important to note here that the Era 100, like any other single smart speaker, needs to be paired with another of its kind for true stereo sound. But don’t get confused with this. The “stereo” we are talking about here is different from the “stereo” that we get from phones or some other speakers. Stereo sound, as a technicality, requires dual speakers.

As a single unit, the Era 100 relies on its audio hardware – the two specially angled tweeters – to create sound separation, and stereo effects and achieve a wide soundstage. And it does an admirable job at it. The sound that it pumps out is a highly balanced one where mids and highs have clear separation. The result is that vocals from the Era 100 sound lush, whereas the instruments have a sparkling clarity to them. For bass, the speaker has a woofer that is 25 percent bigger compared to what Sonos One had. This lets the Era 100 produce more impactful and punchy bass, so much so that in some bass-heavy party songs at the loud volume you would feel the bass.

At least that is what I noticed when I played songs like Chaiyya Chaiyya and Run BTS. Similarly, when I played “Stay With Me,” the Goblin OST sung by the soulful South Korean duo Chanyeol and Punch, I fell in love with it again. Punch’s vocals soared crystal clear, even above the rumbling bass, while Chanyeol’s perfectly balanced sound sent shivers down my spine with every beat.

But my musical dates with Era 100 weren’t limited to modern hits. I recently spent holidays with my family and even celebrated my father’s birthday, with the Era 100 humming the timeless melodies of Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. From “Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas” to “Yeh Vaada Raha,” each song passing through the Sonos Era 100 felt like a warm, comforting hug, chasing away the January chill and helping create cherishable shared memories.

As I noted earlier, the Era 100 has a fantastic soundstage for a speaker of this small size. This I also noticed while watching movies on my laptop to which the Era 100 was paired. There was a scene in a movie where a cup fell from a table, and the shattering sound it made was so rich and full that to me it seemed as if there was an actual cup in my room that had hit the floor.

The speaker does have one issue but not related to the sound quality. This big issue I faced with the Era 100 is related to its connectivity performance. The Sonos Era 100 works smoothly with the iPhone 14 Plus and the MacBook. However, with the Android phone, I often faced connectivity issues. The Bluetooth connectivity often dropped whenever I tried to connect the Sonos Era 100 with an older OnePlus Nord or even the newer Pixel 8.

Sonos Era 100 – Should you buy it?

There are different kinds of speakers for different kinds of users. Some people simply want to blast music at a volume as loud as possible. Some people get a smart speaker so that their kids can talk to it. Some people buy one because they are just looking to add some background sound to their room while they work or live. The Sonos Era 100 is not exactly the right option for them.

But if you are looking to get a speaker that puts quality sound at the front, left, and center, the Era 100 is what you should be looking at. In other words, if you listen to music and want to feel something, the Era 100 will do a good job for you.

At Rs 29,999, it is not exactly an impulse purchase. But at this price, it is also punching (music) above its pay grade. It performs better than what its price and size would indicate, particularly if you are pairing it with an iOS or Apple device. In my opinion, this is the best-sounding speaker – in terms of overall tonality and balance – under Rs 30,000, or even under Rs 40,000, in India. And that it produces this sound while looking classy.

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