Sonos Era 300 review: sparkling wifi hi-fi raises bar for spatial audio

But where the Era 100 is a compact bookshelf speaker, the Era 300 is a different animal. It needs to sit out in the open to allow it to project music outwards from its front, sides and top to fill the room with sound.

The cinched-in design allows a series of speakers to fire up and out to the sides from the back half of the Era 300, projecting sound all around the listener for full stereo and new spatial audio surround sound.

Feed the Era 300 normal tracks from Spotify, Bluetooth or other services and it will pump out excellent stereo audio from a single box with a nice wide sound. But it will also play Dolby Atmos tracks from either Amazon or Apple Music, producing spatial audio that sounds more like you are inside and surrounded by the music than sitting in front of it.

The good news is normal stereo also sounds fantastic on the Era 300, with detailed highs, punchy mids and full bass deep enough for music. The separation between tones, clarity of vocals and balance of that sound are all top-notch. Sonos does a much better job of making each track sparkle without sounding too processed or clinical as is the case with some competitors. Grunge sounds suitably raw, rap nice and aggressive, classical beautifully subtle and electronica packed with high energy.

The Era 300 is generally repairable by Sonos. The company commits to a minimum of five years software support for feature updates after it stops selling a product but has a track record of much longer, including bug and security fixes for its legacy products.

The speaker draws about 1.5W when idle and less while sleeping overnight, up to 9-13W at 50% volume and a maximum of 38W at 100% volume. It contains 40% recycled plastic and is designed with disassembly in mind for repair, refurbishment and recycling. Sonos offers trade-in and product recycling, and publishes annual responsibility and sustainability reports.

The Sonos Era 300 comes in black or white costing £449 ($449/A$749).

For comparison, the Ikea Symfonsik line starts at £99, the Era 100 costs £249, the Sonos Five costs £549, the Apple HomePod costs £299, the Amazon Echo Studio costs £219.99 and the Google Nest Audio costs £89.99.

The Sonos Era 300 is one of the very best wifi speakers you can buy, producing the sort of sparkling audio that will have you discovering new elements of well-worn tracks.

Its stereo performance is excellent, but it really comes alive if you feed it well-produced Dolby Atmos tracks for spatial audio that fills the room and fully immerses the listener. The trouble is that finding quality Dolby Atmos tracks is tough, with only Amazon and Apple Music offering the technology and with many bad mixes on them.