Sonos Era 300 review – A smart speaker and ideal Dolby Atmos surround speaker?

If you pair two Era 300s with a Sonos Arc and optionally with a 3rd gen Sub, then you can create an awesome Dolby Atmos surround system for your home cinema. Although, in order to do this, you ideally need an eARC enabled TV in order to enjoy high bit rates using Dolby Atmos (with ARC you’ll have to settle for Dolby Digital Plus).

In our practical test, our setup performed well and had great 3D audio sound quality (using Apple Music) and Dolby Atmos (using Disney Plus or Amazon Prime, for example). Using an older TV (only ARC support), Disney Plus and the likes only worked in stereo. The subwoofer did especially well during films – while playing music it is a little more subtle (especially using the default settings). In TV use, the Arc also works well as a center and can playback spoken words very clearly. During music, it is sometimes a little too dominant. 

For 3D audio, we would recommend setting up via Trueplay. This currently only works using IOS / iPadOS devices, as it uses their built-in microphones and location sensors for its measurements. If you don’t have access to an IOS device, then we would recommend borrowing a device to do so. You simply set up via the Sonos app while making sure the device is connected to the same network. 

The Era 300 achieved great measurement data during our test, but the Arc did very well, too. If you add an optional 3rd gen Sub subwoofer into the mix, then areas below 100 Hz are considerably better supported. If you generally aren’t too big a fan of bass-heavy music, then you can also just leave out the subwoofer.

As soon as the Era 300 speaker is set up as a rear speaker, you unfortunately can’t continue to use it on its own via Bluetooth. You can only utilize the entire setup together using AirPlay 2, as well. In order to use it on its own, you simply have to disconnect it, which takes a few seconds. This is a shame, as Sonos typically supports multi-room use well – here, we are missing a little bit of flexibility.