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Meet Amelia, TechRadar's Senior Editor for Home Entertainment in the UK With more than eight years experience running the day-to-day production for well-respected tech and finance publications – her previous titles include Editor-In-Chief of Opto magazine and Senior Journalist at Institutional Investor – today you'll find her on the hunt for the latest and best hardware to enhance your home theater experience In the ever-evolving world of home entertainment, Amelia is dedicated to keeping our readers up to speed on market trends and innovations When she's not tinkering with the latest tech, you’ll find her watching movies, taking pictures on her Sony A7 and exploring the great outdoors
1 When is Cyber Monday? For those who want even more deals in the aftermath of Black Friday, there’s Cyber Monday, an online-focused shopping event that hits on the Monday following Black Friday–and this year, that means Monday, November 27 The deals on Cyber Monday aren’t quite as good as those offered on Black Friday, but you’ll still find some solid discountsI’m a little late to the party, because, well, I kind of am! The new Sonos Era 300 speakers came out a couple of months ago, and along with them a rush of reviews — mostly wildly positive — absolutely singing their praises
This includes our own Simon Cohen, whose opinion I trust There are a lot of “game-changer” headlines out there, which I typically to dismiss as hyperbole So I wanted to try the Era 300 for myselfTechnically, yes
Sonos hasn’t designed the Era 300 for this purpose — it’d prefer you get one of its soundbars for TV use — and as such, there’s no way to pump uncompressed sound out to these speakers via HDMI without a Sonos Arc or Sonos Beam because the Era 300 don’t have an HDMI input on them So they fall short of being a direct replacement candidate for something like Klipsch’s The Fives, Sevens, or Nines in that wayYou plug in another Era 300, the Sonos app finds it, you add it to the same room, and the app will ask you to identify the left and right speakers And, boom, you have a stereo pair
Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and moreSign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar contentContact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or overI felt no need for a subwoofer
But I did get a Sonos Sub, so I added one in And while it is true that the sub adds authority to the lowest octave, I honestly feel the system sounds better without it That’s not because the Sonos Sub is incapable of good bass, but because the Era 300 provided more even bass since there were two of them running full range when they are on their own, but they get crossed over and lean on the subwoofer quite a bit when it’s addedKeep an eye on Amazon for steep soundbar discounts from a range of manufacturers, with LG, Polk Audio, Samsung, and Vizio often serving up the best deals
Also, make sure to check Best Buy, Home Depot, Target, Walmart, and other big online sellers, who will often price-match or even undercut the best discounts on AmazonIt has been a while since I set up a Sonos speaker, and I’m super-pleased that getting them up and running is just as easy as I remember Sonos’ app — its user interface — is a big part of why Sonos is so well-loved I plugged in one of the Era 300 speakers, the app found it, connected it to my Wi-Fi without asking for the password because it’s already stored in my phone, and then prompted me to run TruePlay, which is Sonos’ absolutely stellar sound optimization feature
You walk around the room waving your phone around and TruePlay reads the room through your phone’s microphone and optimizes the speaker’s output It works extremely well, and the Era 300 and Era 100 solve a long-standing problem of needing an iPhone for TruePlay The sound profile with TruePlay for me is significantly better than without it You can toggle it on and off to hear for yourself after you run it in your own room
I started with just one Era 300 because I think a lot of folks are likely to have just one of these in a given room You may have already seen its sort of hourglass shape — one that folks were quick to hate when they first saw images of it ahead of its official launch But the design — which I think looks just fine — is actually a classic example of function leading form The speaker is shaped this way to accommodate a series of drivers that shoot sound out of the sides and the top of the speaker, as well as straight out the front
And that’s all in service of producing Spatial Audio and, by extension, Dolby Atmos audio, both of which we are going to spend a significant amount of time talking about here While you might expect the Era 300 to sound good because it’s a Sonos speaker — and Sonos speakers are known to sound very, very good — you might not expect the spatial audio aspect to work as well as it doesThis is when my opinion of the Era 300 skyrocketed If one Era 300 sounds very, very good, then two of them in stereo are just superb
And I don’t just mean for a powered smart speaker – I would put a stereo pair of Era 300 against any number of high-performance bookshelf speaker and amplifier combinations that cost way, way more money I’d put them against Klipsch’s The Fives, The Sevens, and, yeah, The Nines, too The sound is so remarkably good
You may have already seen its sort of hourglass shape — one that folks were quick to hate when they first saw images of it ahead of its official launch. But the design — which I think looks just fine — is actually a classic example of function leading form. The speaker is shaped this way to accommodate a series of drivers that shoot sound out of the sides and the top of the speaker, as well as straight out the front. And that’s all in service of producing Spatial Audio and, by extension, Dolby Atmos audio, both of which we are going to spend a significant amount of time talking about here. While you might expect the Era 300 to sound good because it’s a Sonos speaker — and Sonos speakers are known to sound very, very good — you might not expect the spatial audio aspect to work as well as it does.This is when my opinion of the Era 300 skyrocketed. If one Era 300 sounds very, very good, then two of them in stereo are just superb. And I don’t just mean for a powered smart speaker – I would put a stereo pair of Era 300 against any number of high-performance bookshelf speaker and amplifier combinations that cost way, way more money. I’d put them against Klipsch’s The Fives, The Sevens, and, yeah, The Nines, too. The sound is so remarkably good.
