Sonos Era 100 Speaker Review

The Sonos Era 100 is a sleek home speaker available in Black and White color variants. It has a cylindrical design similar to that of the Sonos One SL. It's smaller than the Sonos Era 300, too, so it takes up less space in your living area. The cable is long and thick, and it connects underneath the speaker for a more discreet look. Plus, there's a threaded mounting hole if you want to place it on a tripod or the separately available Era 100 Stand.

This speaker is pretty small and lightweight. However, since it's wired-only, it's not the best choice if you want to bring your music with you on the go. If you're moving it from room to room, it's easy enough to carry in one hand.

The Sonos Era 100 has a solid and sturdy build for surviving the everyday bustle of your household. It's mostly made of plastic. Even the grilles in front are made of plastic, unlike the metal grilles you find with the Sonos One SL. Since it's meant for indoor use, it isn't rated for dust and water resistance. That said, if you want to use it near your shower or sink, the manufacturer does say that it can withstand high humidity.

The controls are located on the top of the speaker. They're quite easy to use, and they offer some feedback. For example, the green light on the Sonos logo stays solid when you reach the lowest volume setting. There's an audible cue for min and max volume as well. Also, a light on top of the speaker lets you know when voice services are enabled. You get an audible chime, and a blue light appears when you pair and connect to a device.

• Press or swipe across +/- buttons: Controls the volume.
• Press once: Plays/pauses audio.
• Press and hold play/pause button: Adds audio that's playing in another room.
• Press Fast Forward button: Skips to the next track.
• Press Rewind button: Skips to the previous track.
• Press Voice Services button: Enables/disables voice control.
• Press and hold Bluetooth button: Pairs a new device.
• Press Bluetooth button once: Connects to a previously recognized device.

There's also a microphone on/off switch on the rear of the speaker. When the microphone is off, all features that use the device are disabled, including voice services and the Trueplay tuning.

• Setup guide
• Power cable (6.4 ft / 1.9 m)
• Sonos Era 100 speaker

The Sonos Era 100 has a good frequency response accuracy. As with the Sonos Era 300, it has two room correction options— iOS users can opt for Advanced Tuning, while Android users are limited to the Quick Tuning tool. The difference is that Quick Tuning only uses the microphones in the speaker, while the Advanced Tuning feature also runs microphones through your phone to adjust the speaker's sound. For our testing, we ran the Advanced Tuning tool.

Its sound is quite balanced, especially in the mids, where most voices and lead instruments reproduce. It's a cleaner sound than you get with the Sonos One Gen 2/One SL, with less bass bleeding into the vocals. The clearer vocals are especially noticeable on tracks like Billie Eilish's Bad Guy, which has a prominent bassline and soft vocals. Plus, since it's a stereo speaker, the overall sound is wider than you get with the One Gen 2/One SL. You do notice a touch of extra brightness on some tracks, though. However, you can always use the bass and treble adjustments to customize its sound.

The soundstage performance is excellent. It's a stereo speaker, so you don't need a second model to get stereo sound. Plus, its 360-degree design provides a wide and immersive sound, and you get good separation of instruments between the right and left channels. Its directivity is very good, too, so your audio sounds consistent from different angles.

This speaker gets loud enough for an average-sized living room. There's some compression at max volume, just like with the Sonos One Gen 2/One SL, which impacts the clarity of audio reproduction.

Thanks to built-in Alexa, you can enjoy a fantastic voice assistant performance with this speaker. It has no trouble hearing your commands, even if you're further away. It doesn't perform as well as the Sonos Era 300 in noisier environments, but if you have the Apple Home app, you can set it up to ask Siri to play audio through Apple Music. You can't use Siri for other voice assistant functions, though.

The Sonos S2 app is a handy tool, especially if you want to control the speaker from your phone or another mobile device. It lets you perform lots of different functions, like Trueplay tuning or adjusting the bass and treble. Advanced Tuning with Trueplay is only available with iOS devices, while Android users are limited to Quick Tuning. You can also check out the Loudness tool if you like to listen at lower volumes. Your ear can struggle to pick up bass range frequencies when the volume is low; this feature is designed to compensate for that by boosting these frequencies. You can also connect the speaker with other compatible Sonos devices through the app and set up a stereo pair with them for a more immersive sound. For a full tour, you can check out our video here.

This speaker has a USB-C port. It's designed for both audio playback and Ethernet connections, though you must purchase Sonos' compatible Line-In Adapter or Combo Adapter separately to connect your devices.

Unlike previous Sonos speakers, this device supports Bluetooth connectivity. You're able to stream audio from your phone to the speaker wirelessly. Though we measured a fair amount of audiovisual synchronization error, especially with Android, we didn't notice much delay when watching real-life content. Some apps, like YouTube, compensate for this, though, which may explain part of the difference. Depending on the status of their servers, the latency could vary.

This speaker is Wi-Fi compatible, making streaming audio over your home network easy. If you own an Apple device, you can stream to the speaker using Apple AirPlay 2. Check out a home speaker like the JBL Authentics 200 if you want something with Chromecast support.