So, who's buying an Era 100 or Era 300? Oh, and there seems to be some pushback on my suggestion that the Era 300 is "replacing" the Sonos Five. I'm simply reading from notes I made during a press briefing - there's always the chance this may have been misinterpreted by me, or not clearly communicated via Sonos during that briefing. These things happen, and as noted during the video, the Five is still very much available. Enjoy the review!
Sonos still a pain in the arse to set up for no reason I see! I have a love/hate relationship with my Sonos set up; when it's working it's magnificent, but about every six months it has a total breakdown, then forces one on me as I spend the best part of a day getting it up and running again. I have just counted, I have 17 Sonos speakers of varying types around the house! Takes ages to get them working once it has a fit. No doubt I will be upgrading a pair of my old Sonos ones for Era 100's at some point this year. Thanks Mark for the video!
Another great vid! I have the era 300's as surrounds pair with ARC and two subwoofers for home theater movies and the sound is phenomenal! They are also good for music however where they really shine is for movies.
Your channel is the first i have heard that the HomePod 2nd gen distorts in any way, i also sell these products and during my testing or any of my customers testings i have never experienced any distortion of any kind and managing a gadget store has made me experience and listen to a wide variety of Bluetooth and WiFi speakers and the HomePod for it’s size is the best i have ever listened to yet, the Era 100 just arrived on Saturday so we’ll be doing some unboxing and listening sections today, so i will get to compare the two products side by side…
Not sure what else I can say about this, mate. The HomePod absolutely veers towards distortion at the bottom end on certain tracks. It doesn’t appear to handle bass particularly confidently (again, on certain tracks). It simply needs pulling back a bit, that’s all. The Era 300 is a great example of how it should be done (as is the Era 100, to be fair!).
Great video but I think it's a big miss that you didn't do a more comprehensive comparison between the Homepod 2 and the Era 100 as they are both closer in price and in form factor to each other. People going for the Era 300 will probably be deciding between it vs. a dual Era 100/dual Homepod 2 set-up as opposed to a single Homepod set-up.
@@MarkEllisReviews ??? similar to the homepod in specs and its 150 euro's more expensive. Looks like the homepod isn't such a bad deal after all. Thanks for the video Mark.
I am considering the era 300 for its Atmos capability but I have not been able to find out if you can use it for that when connected to an AppleTV or wether I will have to use the smart tv streaming options instead.
Era 300 was too big for my small living room , so I decided to change it to Era 100 for my rear speakers , and I think it's the right decision. Now I have Arc, Sub 3 gen, Era 100 for a small room, Era 300 I think is a wrong choice for me .
Hey Mark, how do these function as a desktop speaker? Trying to pair it with my Mac air.. also do i need to get the adapter and hardwire so that i dont get any lags?
I had the biggest sound improvement with my Beam Gen 1 when I added the Gen 3 Sub. I had Ikea Symfonisk rears and later updated to One SLs and that wasn't as dramatic as adding the sub.
the sound quality has always been good and the price has always been too high but the biggest problem they have is that they keep updating them which can add and remove features, The comparison between homepod and era 300 isn't fair, there is a massive price difference however the era does support more services. I wish they didnt build in any voice assistants into any of these speakers because not everyone wants them. you should be able to disable them in the app at the very least
I feel like Sonos could have added a bit more punch and depth on the Sonos era 300. The sound is satisfying but distorts depending on the track you’re listening to. I love my Sonos Five, subs and arc.
Interesting. I’m curious how the Era 100s compare to the old sonos one or even a dedicated Alexa speaker. Right now I have the Sonos Move and it’s by far by favorite sonos speaker
Good review very realistic when speaking about both ERA. Oh, yea the ERA 300 isn’t replacing the Fives 😂😂😂 Give it a year or so before Sonos comes out with the ERA 500, then the ERA will fall to there 3 position as best speaker within the Sonos portfolio 👍
I've been trying to settle with and get used to my new Era 300 in the past few days, but I'm not liking it that much, despite having Apple Music and access to spatial audio. It has a strange way of chopping up music into separate parts with the vocals often sounding dislocated and muted/hidden behind instruments. I plan to return it and will either change it for an Era 100 or even a Five speaker. I already have a previous generation Five speaker in another room and it sounds massively better to me than the Era 300.
I purchased the Arc, dual Gen 3 subs, and Fives as rear surrounds before I knew about the Era 300 release date. My current set-up sounds fantastic for non-Atmos and Atmos content from major TV series/movie streaming services. I've noticed Atmos is only about 20%-30% of what I listen to and not sure how the Five compare to the Era 300 for the 70% of the non-Atmos audio I listen to?
I think I mentioned this before but not sure your HomePod has a fault with it or it’s placement I find the bass response excellent on the new HomePod for example protection by massive attack goes very low without any distortion in actual fact I’m been impressed with the clarity these sonos speakers do sound promising I have to say
Nope, I’m confident there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just the way it’s EQ’d - it’s incredibly bass heavy to the point of overkill on certain tracks.
Would you reckon 2 era 300s together would be perfect or is it on its own enuf for a room size 4.5 x 4.5 in a semi detached house with sensitive neighbours haha
You’ll be good with one. Adding another is more about creating a stereo pair as opposed to increasing volume (although that’ll naturally happen, obviously).
Worth mentioning is that Homepods have never been available in Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep. etc.) while Sonos speakers are. Easy choice then. I don’t quite understand policy here, no Siri in local languages, no homepods and some other gear, not mentioning services and offers limited to basic. Well, on the other hand it’s only 70 mio. people market…
because you people in Central/Eastern Europe (no offense) don't have the money to pay 350 euro's for a homepod. Your market is not interesting enough for Apple. Too little people will buy a homepod in those countries.
@@MarkEllisReviews that's the height adjustable desk featured in 8:04 Would you recommend it as a good product for daily workspace use? Also the name of your chair will help. Cheers 🥂
Great Video Mark as always. I won’t be buying them these two Sonos speakers are just plain ugly I had that view on the press release and when I actually saw them in person it just enforced it.
Sonos five gen 2 is not the same as era 300s. Sonos five is way bigger with bigger woofers etc. But the era 300s are such a winner right now interms of dolby atmos etc.
nice, but thee excuse that you could not play because copyright thing was cheeeeeeesyyyy, just play some of 60000 million songs copy right free. This new stuffs from Sonos looks good tho.
The era 300 are not a replacement for the Five at all. It's replacing the Play 3. The Era 500 whenever that comes out will probably be the replacement for the Five.
Sonos is much more expandable and has more features. That being said, I'm still a HomePod guy since I'm not much of an audiophile. I prefer simple setups with little maintenance and configuration. I do hear of people having issues with HomePods as movie speakers, so hopefully Apple works the bugs out.
@@morells09 See pinned comment. There's lots to take in with this stuff and with such short periods during which to get these reviews out (including abandoning time with my young family on Friday night and Saturday to get this out) _if_ that's a miscommunication (on either mine or Sonos' part) and it's the only small error in this vid, I'll take it 😉
@@BBushell similar quotes in the press suggest that Sonos expect Five sales to be driven to the Sonos Era 300 instead, so I don’t accept that it’s a “blooper”, I’m afraid. There’s a lot to this behind the scenes, as you might suspect.
Sonos will never get another $ of mine. Have a Gen 1 Play 5 that has unbelievably good sound that is now pretty much a bookend because they've obsoleted it via software.
