I was wrong about Sonos. - Sonos Era 300 & 100

Sonos a very tasteful living room sound adornment today we've got the new era 300 and 100 line both Linus and I have looked at Sonos equipment before in the past he's had a look at the arc I think I had a look at the beam uh but today I get to fondle the new era 300. can I say fondle on short circuit today I get to fondle the era 300s so we have all the colors here today we have both white and black uh but I think we're gonna look at the 300s this one's got a nice gouge in it got these cool little locking things on the side you just kind of pop them open and then the top just slides that's nice got our speaker here in a nice little wrap pull that oh my God it's heavy oh it's not just like crappy fabric covering it's like this it's got a hem on it that's kind of amazing and they're both white great this is off to a great start looks like they have matching power cables there we have a let's get started menu it's nice nice printed heavy cardboard so we'll leave that to reference in a bit cord is yeah rubbery kind of plasticky a little memory which is great this is pretty much the whole the whole thing metal front which is nice metal Grille kind of a soft touch plastic it's matte no piano black thank God nice big surface on the back slight indent there which is kind of tasteful it's very pretty thing I would say feet are rubberized which is kind of nice non-slip this mounting holes on the bottom for the wall mounts that are an optional extra there's also a floor stand as well we'll talk about that a bit later controls are up here on the top there's a voice assistant button and it looks like the little slider thing and playback controls too and new for Sonos apparently is Bluetooth yay I don't know apparently this has always been a thing and I haven't really included that before we have a silence mute switch here on the back for your voice assistant and then there's a little USBC cable thing there which we'll also talk about a bit later okay so that's the 300 the big one we have a nice choice here between white and or white thanks uh thanks again same sort of thing comes in this nice little sock we've got similar markings on the back we have our Bluetooth button this one's vertical which is kind of cool and the silence and the USB port and then on the bottom we have our power input which goes in there like yeah and uh the same sort of hole for your wall mounts or stance they come with different stands you have to buy different stands if you want these in different stands if you want this one this one's power cord is on the back though which goes like there which is a bit of a weird Choice honestly you know if I'm going to mount this against a wall as it's supposed to be a surround speaker then it's going to be here why not put it in the bottom and then have it route at the back like this I have some thoughts on that later Belle said he really struggled to get this one out and oh my God it is right this is awful I'm a weak little man there's not enough there's enough room to like get a proper grip on it Jesus okay there we go my hands are broken now same sort of solid construction these feel really really really solid no compressibility anywhere nice and metal everywhere there's already some like brown or scuffing or something I have got Dirty Heads I just washed my hands yeah I wash my hands first time this month General size of these I think for the 100 the size is kind of nice just to kind of maybe have on a shelf or like behind you somewhere should be nice and easy to hide away the weight is really quite nice and Hefty I'm not entirely sure if that's added in as metal or if it's like just actually constructed maybe with a metal core or something like that sometimes companies will add weight to their products to make them feel more premium I'm not entirely sure that's the case here the power cables do not want to come out there we go this one same sort of thing it's rather Hefty maybe about what five ten pounds something like that the construction of this also feels really good I can't like Bend this front grill in at all Sona says that there's some specialized wave guides in the front which have like little spiky things I really wanted to like rip this off and and demo those but I don't think that's going to happen some small panel Gap issues right here at the bottom so yeah I mean it's got a nice fit and finish I think that little panel Gap thing is a little bit problematic I would expect better for how much this costs yeah now I'm seeing it everywhere and the speaker's ruined for me uh the shape of its uh shape of it's pretty nice a little bit fatter at the back than the front like everybody should be uh yeah I think I could see this on a bookshelf or even maybe mount it up at the top of the ceiling or on their stands that they do behind I don't think it would be too in your face the white is probably a little bit more pronounced than the black but I guess it depends on your interior design some more fun colors would have been nice too I probably would have bought these if they were like bright yellow they might be great for bookshelf speakers and accent or something like that you could always spray bomb them I guess the feet seem good yeah they're really rubbery they're like gripping really well into the table it's got a lot of weight on just a little tiny footprint so maybe not a table speaker I don't know if it's more rigid than this one the 100s are supported completely on the bottom so they don't and I'll move it all there they're good well let's see how these sound we've got to get them hooked up to the app but before we have to get you hooked up to our sponsor alpaca keyboards how's that for a Segway stop it editor no thanks to a pack of keyboards for sponsoring today's video alpaca keyboard's newest keyboard the white fox Eclipse features an iconic design based on the original white fox that helped popularize the 65 layout it has a combination of the most desirable features gasket mounting programmability Bluetooth RGB and Cherry profile PBT keycaps the white fox eclipse is also the first keyboard to feature hot swappable cases thanks to its magnetic gasket mounting system there are options for custom CNC aluminum case with both low and high profile designs and if you're a Mac User don't worry the keycap set is designed to be compatible with both Mac and PC check out the white fox Eclipse Kickstarter at the link below okay let's get these boys hooked up to the app no power button I don't think oh there is a light on the front that's nice it's nice and subtle might be waiting for pairing it'll be nice if it like bonked or something I need to give it location permissions storage I don't know what's going on anymore and we'll give it microphone we'll just give it everything here's my social insurance number it's getting it ready it's going to play a chime all right connecting to the Wi-Fi I like that they can support 5G so many iot devices these days only sport 2.4 uh there's an update available of course because there has to be and we're getting advertisements for Dolby Atmos which we'll definitely be talking about a bit later I'm trying to figure out exactly what these do because Sonos won't tell us can I add alarms we can group speakers we can say favorites we can personalize it and enable automatic updates neat see you in 20 minutes when this is done so it looks like we can set up speaker groups and things like that on a room basis so if you have these in your bedroom or your living room or your kitchen then they would all be kind of different zones we can have a subwoofer which is also a product they offer I believe you can have up to two if they're the same and we can also add a stereo pair each pair of speakers have to be the same model you can't like Cross Match different models together we have some EQ settings bass treble and a loudness toggle which is on by default true play which I believe is some sort of technology to make it more acoustic that's kind of their version of of room tuning so let's let's give that a go it's going to be loud I hope foreign [Music] that was nice uh just from the sound of that it just seems like it's going to be a nice performative speaker uh it seems to have six drivers or something like that two woofers in the side two tweeters uh firing up in this direction another Tweeter that has a horn that kind of fires up and then another one in the front so it's supposed to do Dolby Atmos and I think it's supposed to be three Channel um I'm not entirely sure if it's two channel with some psycho acoustic tuning to like use the up firing thing Sonos doesn't seem to actually list how many channels these are they kind of avoid that in their material which is a little bit strange we also have a height audio setting which kind of gives me the hope that the up firing is its own dedicated Channel it also has a line in so no aux cord on this one they've gone the iPhone root you need to buy a dongle if you want to have line it you can buy a 20 USBC to three and a half millimeter Jack which plugs in right there or for the low low price of forty dollars you can buy a combo Jack that has an Ethernet port and a three and a half millimeter Jack which is strange it's not like there's any room left to have that on the back here I think we'll we'll get some crab Rave in this now foreign [Music] right now it really is just coming out of the sides I guess it's maybe why they're angled forward a little bit so that's kind of that's kind of interesting [Music] it's half volume so let's turn it up let's see just destroy our brains okay I can't that's extremely loud uh that is like hearing damagingly loud that's awesome no Distortion whatsoever that's a very very good result uh I'm I'm quite impressed with that actually there's no Sub in it and it's really quite Bassy as well which is nice I think if you were having this in a home theater setup I would pair it with a sub but this is a really good performance uh already which is good to see let's listen to it like I'm actually listening to a speaker so I'm going to sit here [Music] that sounds bad because it's going that way it's not playing music at me which is kind of interesting I'm gonna go over there and listen to it and see if it's better because I'm sitting in front of it and I think it's supposed to be like a room speaker so goodbye foreign okay what I thought was gonna happen happened and it sounds really good sort of around the entire room uh almost exactly the same as if I was sitting next to it so this is definitely designed as kind of a throw around the room speaker sitting here is kind of not great but everywhere else is really quite nice let's try some Dolby Atmos some music okay so I'm gonna play this song which is on Apple music in a spatial audio playlist which is the Dolby Atmos something or other I hope we have that still enabled here unfortunately we'll have to dub over this with something like Smooth Jazz but uh at least I'll be able to see if the top firing Tweeter and the front firing Tweeter actually tweet [Music] I don't know if this is even right this doesn't sound like spatial music okay yeah this says Dolby Atmos down here and those speakers are definitely on right now [Music] uh yeah sounds really good now uh that all the speakers are working I don't know why you can't just turn the other two on when you're playing stereo music because it's one speaker so it's not going to get the stereo separation just playing all the speakers I mean I'm sitting next to it and it's supposed to be farther away maybe a little Hollow in the mids because the woofers are trying to like compensate with a hell of a lot of bass uh but yeah it was good enough I think for a tiny little speaker let's get a 100 going and compare the two the man and I'm here to say you should buy an error 300 and use my promo code subscription today [Music] foreign foreign this is also obscenely loud a little bit of distortion from the Tweeter I think a little bit of crackling but no one in their goddamn right mind would listen to music that loud there's also some nice air movement from the woofers on the side this one's way more directional kind of more facing this way the base kind of propagates more from the side which would be good send it out into the room and have it bounce around where you want the tweeters a bit more directional than maybe the 300 provides unless you really want to go crazy with the atmos system you could probably get away with this instead this one obviously doesn't support Dolby because there's touch controls at the top where there should be a speaker so yeah it does have these angled tweeters and one woofers there's three speakers so this will be just a two channel where this one is claiming possibly a four Channel maybe probably just a three if I'm being honest let's do a stereo pair that was actually amazing okay so what it's done when I've made a stereo pair which is kind of interesting actually it's disabled these up firing tweeters and it's just playing out of the front ones now so now they're acting much more like directional speakers which is kind of clever I would like control over that in the app but removing that control simplifies it for the end user I think let's actually Point them towards me like they're supposed to be because I'm just getting all Bass from the sides yeah that's great um I mean having the mid drivers out the side is kind of I guess a good idea sometimes depending they seem to be a little bit lower down in the frequency range than like a traditional woofer it seems to reproduce the low frequencies better than some of maybe the high mids but it's not to its massive detriment I mean I'm being very particular here that's uh certainly of an acceptable sound quality which is which is really good to see blinding lights in Dolby Atmos Atmos is really strong there that is actually amazing uh that's that's a that's great that's really good um I think that's like worth the price of admission right there the atmos is where these really do shine uh yeah I don't I don't know how I feel about that uh I don't like praising things for what kind of maybe feel like gilinix or maybe I'm old now but that really does improve it I wonder if that's because the speakers are more tuned for Atmos then maybe they are like normal playback I think maybe if we just had the stereo music with these extra tweeters enabled then it would sound as good I don't know if our ceiling height or even the layout here really makes the atmos shine but the music sounds better sounds more spacious probably because we have some extra drivers in play then we don't with stereo audio [Music] there's something I didn't mention is I like the default EQ on the 300s which I threw on the ground these 100s maybe a little bit of a base heavy probably maybe room uh but from sitting here on the desk negative four is a little bit more balanced they're kind of a bit overpowering and the mids are kind of squashed so the 300s have a bit more of an even sound than the 100s here but these are still quite good I think maybe I'm just spoiled from those 300s I would much rather have a pair of these than one of those definitely these are about half the cost of a 300. so these era 100s are 250 bucks each and so that means they're 500 dollars for two and the 300 is 450 bucks so if you buy a pair of these you get a bit of a discount from them and you buy them individually and the stands for the 300s are about 280 bucks so you can have a pair of stamps ends or like maybe one of these for your bedroom right it's kind of interesting and then you know a forty dollar dongle to put on the back here and if we look at their exploded view like I think there's a whole bunch of space in the bottom here so if I want to put on a shelf I can put it like that and if I want to put it on a stand I can route the cable into the stand on the 100s but I don't know giant Cable in the back like it just looks gross let me be able to hide it underneath if I want to put it on a shelf or if I'm going to wall mount it like I can't have it flush with the wall there's no reflex at the back it's it's just a little bit frustrating I think in that same sort of vein I don't understand why I can only pair two of these so in each room you're only allowed to have one stereo pair which means that if I wanted to say listen to quadraphonic audio with four of these and like really experience uh Dolby Atmos music I can only get two speakers it's like they don't want my money because we have four here it would be really nice to maybe have two of these guys at the front and two of these behind me is maybe some side fills maybe I've got a big room but because it's all in one room I can only have one stereo pair Sonos can support something like 32 active devices simultaneously so why can't I buy a whole bunch of these and have a what was it 27.1.10 system with 10 up firing speakers and you know sound everywhere like Dolby Atmos is supposed to be able to function as something clearly missing from the Sonos document at least what I could find is a clear indication of how many channels each of these guys have apparently Sonos can support 5.1.2 but that's kind of from what I've found on the internet and not exactly from their documentation I shouldn't have to go digging through Community forms and other posts and news articles to figure out what I'm actually about to buy if anybody knows please let me know this is kind of beyond my ability to test here Labs where are you at honestly uh for the price and performance ratio these sound really good at least the 300s out of the box no tuning nothing like that you know we do the room thing whatever sounds great for 480 each I think I would definitely recommend getting a pair which is even more money as a singular speaker listening to non-atmos audio which is going to limit you to a lot of music it doesn't I think you can do better with a cheaper speaker if you're getting one two spatial audio even one with spatial audio quite incredible um two is really where your money is how great the system is if they would implement it a little bit differently it's like it's right there you just have speakers as individuals and let people do what they want with them and have as many as they want like do you not want our money do you not want me to go out and buy 10 of these and put them all around my house because I want to this sounded good and you won't let me because your ecosystem doesn't function like it should it's sad it's short-sighted it's pathetic my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined

Channel: ShortCircuit

Views: 376,583

Keywords: shortcircuit, SC, unboxing, first impression, tech, gadget, home, fun, buy, sonos, era 100, era 300, speaker, smart home, wifi, bluetooth, spatial, surround, dolby atmos

Id: ns3-phVacsg

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023