Sonos has introduced a new pair of speakers including the Era 300 to bring spatial sound to homes and the Era 100 to replace the long-favored Sonos One.
The Era 300 is an all-new spatial sound speaker from Sonos for immersive music and Dolby Atmos experiences. It’s shaped like a sideways hourglass and fitted with six speakers including four tweeters and two woofers to direct sound left, right, forwards, and upwards.
The speaker setup includes a forward-firing mid-tweeter for a sizable center channel, and another two side-firing mid-tweeters create stereo separation. The last upward-firing tweeter reflects sound off ceilings to create a sense of height for Dolby Atmos audio. The two woofers are also positioned right and left to deliver low-end stereo sound.
Now all those speakers work together to deliver an immersive spatial sound experience that’s like being in a bubble of sound coming from every direction. Currently, it works best music tracks recorded for spatial sound – including those on Amazon Music Unlimited.
The Era 300 can also function as a multi-channel rear surround speaker for home theater setups. Now to get the best spatial sound with shows and movies mastered for Dolby Atmos, Sonos tells us it’s best to have a Sonos Arc in front of the TV and a pair of Era 300’s as rear left and right speakers.
We were shown a few demos including the catacomb tripwire scene from 1917 that recreated the same claustrophobic experience including the explosion reverberating off the walls.
Outside of using this speaker for spatial sound, the Sonos Era 300 delivered a surprisingly spacious stereo soundstage from a single unit.
Following the Sonos Move and Roam SL, the Era 300 comes with Bluetooth 5.0 and AirPlay 2.0 support. Additionally, the Era 300 supports Trueplay, which optimizes the sound of the speaker by analyzing the acoustics of your living space – and for the first time it’s designed work for Android and Apple users.
The Sonos Era 300 will release on March 28th and it will retail for $449.
Sonos Era 100
Perhaps the even bigger news is Sonos is finally replacing its six year old One speaker with the Era 100. This new speaker is a bit larger and comes in a slightly more off-white color (but the same shade of black), plus it now features angled tweeters for richer left and right stereo sound.
As with the Era 300, the Era 100 features all of the same latest connectivity including Bluetooth 5.0, AirPlay 2.0, and Trueplay sound tunning.
The Sonos Era 100 will also be available for retail on March 28th for $249 – which is a bump up from the $219 Sonos One.
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