Built from published evidence: the Sonos Era 100 is the best-sounding compact smart speaker Sonos has made — bigger and deeper than the One, with Trueplay, AirPlay 2, and multiroom that works. It is also the product of Sonos's messiest chapter: no Google Assistant, a $39 adapter tax on line-in, and the May 2024 app redesign that drew unprecedented backlash and cost the CEO his job. At $249 it was a stretch; at the $199 Black Friday record low — or wherever the street price has settled since — it becomes the obvious small Sonos to buy. Check the current price on Amazon and judge it as a speaker: the sound earns it, the software history explains the discount.
— THE VERDICT · JUDGEANY EDITORSThe Sonos Era 100 arrived in March 2023 with a simple job: replace the beloved Sonos One without breaking what made it beloved. On paper it does more of everything: two angled tweeters plus a midwoofer (the One had one tweeter), three Class-D amplifiers, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, AirPlay 2, and Trueplay tuning that now works on Android as well as iOS. It launched at $249, thirty dollars above the One, and reviewers mostly agreed the sound earned the bump. What they did not agree on is whether anything else about the Era 100 did.
On sound, the evidence is strong. PCWorld called it "the best-sounding compact streaming smart speaker we've encountered," measuring peaks around 90 dB on streamed music. What Hi-Fi, comparing it directly to the One, wrote that the Era 100 "takes everything we liked about the Sonos One and cranks it up a dozen notches," bigger, more spacious, deeper in the bass, while noting the One's full-bodied vocal richness didn't fully carry over. TechRadar's scores tell the rest: 4.5 for features, 4 for sound, 4 for design, and only 3.5 for value. Their sound critique was specific: the bass can be "a little clumsy" and heavy-handed, and the stereo effect from the angled tweeters reads as subtle. Owners land near 4.3 to 4.4 stars across roughly 2,500–2,800 Amazon ratings, praising the out-of-size sound and the Trueplay room tuning.
The smart-speaker half of the Era 100 is where the caveats stack up. Amazon Alexa is built in, but Google Assistant is gone — Sonos blamed a change in Google's requirements, and multiple reviewers (TechAdvisor, T3, SlashGear) list it as a genuine loss. Bluetooth 5.0 is here but TechAdvisor found it flaky in practice. The USB-C port accepts line-in only through the Sonos Line-In Adapter — $39, sold separately, with the Ethernet option bundled into the same combo adapter. And then there is the app. Sonos's May 2024 redesign launched missing basics like sleep timers and alarms, drew what The Register called "unprecedented consumer backlash," and cost CEO Patrick Spence his job in January 2025. The company has said it mishandled the rollout, but buyers kept reporting an uneven experience long after.
Value is the open question. TechRadar's 3.5 for value stung: the Era 100 costs more than the One did at launch while giving up Google Assistant and charging extra for the adapter. The comparison that hurts most is the one Sonos made itself — the Era 100 SL, a mic-free version launched in March 2026 at $189, whose retuned bass reviewers preferred to the original's "overexcitable" low end (TechRadar's word for it). With a record-low $199 on Black Friday (per TechRadar's deals coverage), the pricing has drifted into genuinely good territory. Check the current price on Amazon — at the right discount, the caveats start looking like footnotes.
So: the best-sounding small Sonos you can buy, wrapped in the company's messiest chapter. If you want a compact streamer with real stereo tricks, Trueplay, and multiroom that just works, the Era 100 earns its keep — buy it knowing Alexa is your only voice assistant, the adapter is extra, and the app's reputation was earned the hard way. If you want the cheapest ticket into the Sonos ecosystem, the SL exists for a reason.