Can Sonos’s all-new, feature-packed contender trump Apple’s long-established titan?
APPLE HOMEPOD 2Price £299 Bluetooth 5.0 Connections AirPlay 2 Dimensions 14 x 14 x 17cm Weight 2.3kg SONOS ERA 300Price £449 Bluetooth 5.0 Connections Wi-fi, AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, USB-C line-in Dimensions 16 x 26 x 19cm Weight 4.5kg
Sonos is probably the biggest name in multi-room audio, but with Apple, Amazon, Google and more getting in on the act, it has faced some stiff competition in recent years. Now the company is hitting back with the Sonos Era 300, its most versatile speaker yet. How does it fare against the five-star Apple HomePod 2?
Both of these smart speakers are premium, well-featured devices, and their prices reflect that. The HomePod 2 launched at £299 and the Sonos, which packs plenty of technology and an eye-catching design, comes in at £449. Don’t expect significant discounts on either device.
Design
The Era 300 moves Sonos in a new design direction, boasting a unique cinched hourglass body that looks like no other smart speaker on the market. And it’s not just for aesthetic purposes. Like all the best designs, it serves to enhance the functionality of the speaker too – in this case, to fire sound out at all angles to help with the spatial audio feature.
The control panel on the top has an enhanced volume slider, and everything works seamlessly with other Sonos speakers.
The HomePod 2 looks a little dull by comparison, but we can’t fault the quality of the unit and woven mesh coating. The touch panel on the top is a little smaller than on the original HomePod, though more of it illuminates when chatting with Siri, which is pleasing to the eye. For innovation alone, Sonos takes this round. WINNER: SONOS ERA 300
Features
This is where the Era 300 really excels. It is Sonos’s first home speaker to offer Bluetooth, so you can beam content to it wirelessly from your mobile device. It also comes with a USB-C line-in, so you can hook up an external sound source.
There is wi-fi 6 and AirPlay 2 for streaming and multi-room capabilities, and it can handle 24-bit/48kHz audio from Qobuz and Amazon Music.
But the real feather in its cap is spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. Thanks to the Era 300’s unique shape and six-driver arrangement, it is perfect for creating the kind of immersive soundscape that makes spatial audio so appealing. There’s a woofer on both the bottom left and right sides each, with waveguides for the tops. The top-firing tweeter will bounce audio back off the ceiling to help create the spatial audio/Dolby Atmos effect,
