Does Sonos’s Most Expensive Speaker Still Have a Place?

Sonos sells two high-end wireless speakers: the Five and the Era 300.

The Five is the older, larger and more expensive of two, while the Era 300 is optimized for playing immersive sound and supports Dolby Atmos. The two are the best-sounding wireless speakers Sonos offers, but they’re also quite a bit different.

If you’re wondering if you should buy the Five or the Era 300, it will mostly depend on four things.

1. How are you going to be using the speaker?
2. What are you listening to?
3. What devices are you streaming your audio from?
4. How much are you willing to spend?

The Five and the Era 300: How Are They Similar?

Floyd

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

At the end of the day, the Five and Era 300 are both Sonos speakers — and therefore they work in much the same way and have a lot in common.

Wi-Fi streaming

All Sonos speakers support wireless streaming over your home’s Wi-Fi network. You can stream music from most major music streaming apps — including Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, Amazon Music and Qobuz — directly to either the Five or Era 300.

Multi-room grouping

You can group any Sonos speaker with other Sonos speakers so long as they are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. This means you can have all your Sonos speakers playing the same audio throughout your entire house.

Stereo pairing

You can stereo pair any two of the same Sonos speakers — in this case, two Fives or two Era 300s together — so that they play true stereo sound. They need to be the same model of speaker, so you can’t create a stereo pair with one Five and one Era 300, for example.

Rear-channel play

If you have two Fives or two Era 300s, you can designate a pair of either to act as rear-channel speakers in a Sonos home theater system with the company’s higher-end soundbars: the Arc Ultra, Arc or Beam (second-generation).

Hi-fi sound

Both speakers are capable of streaming high-resolution audio at up to 24-bit/48kHz. However, this only works with certain streaming services. Currently, Sonos is capable of playing high-resolution audio from Amazon Music Unlimited and Qobuz. It’s expected that support for high-resolution streaming from Apple Music is coming soon, too.

Line-in connection

Both the Five and Era 300 speakers support line-in connectivity. This means you can hardwire an audio source — like a turntable, CD player, computer, or projector — to the port in the rear of the speaker. However, they differ because the Five has an AUX port and the Era 300 has a USB-C port, so they require different adapters.

Why Buy the Sonos Era 300?

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

The Era 300 is optimized for Dolby Atmos.

The Era 300 is Sonos’s first standalone speaker with an upward-firing driver. (Sonos’s three soundbars that support Dolby Atmos, the Arc Ultra, Arc and second-generation Beam, also have upward-firing drivers.) When playing Dolby Atmos content, it fires sound upwards to create virtual high channels and the effect that sound is coming from somewhere other than the speaker itself.

There is a catch, however. You have to subscribe to Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited to listen to music that supports Dolby Atmos on the Era 300. Spotify doesn’t currently support Dolby Atmos content.

Two Era 300s make more immersive rear-channel speakers.

If you already have an Arc or Arc Ultra soundbar and want to create the best Sonos home theater system possible, you’ll want to get two Era 300s and dedicate them as rear-channel speakers. Each speaker has an upward-firing driver that can better take advantage of the Dolby Atmos movies, shows and other content that is widely available.

The Era 300 is a smart speaker.

The Era 300 is a smart speaker that can respond to voice commands via Amazon Alexa or Sonos Voice Control. Unlike Sonos’s previous smart speakers, the Era 300 (as well as the Era 100) does not support Google Assistant.

The Era 300 supports Bluetooth.

Bluetooth means anybody can play audio on the Era 300 — just push the Bluetooth button on the top-back of the speaker and pair on your smartphone — without you having to share your Wi-Fi password. It enables you to stream content that’s not from a music streaming service, like the audio from a YouTube video or an original recording you have saved on your smartphone.

The Era 300 is the better speaker for Android users.

The Era 300 (and Era 100) is the first Sonos speaker that supports TruePlay for Android, which has been a feature previously only supported for iPhone and iPad users. (Sonos’s Arc Ultra soundbar also supports this.)

The Era 300 can use its built-in microphones to calibrate its sound for its space. It’s not entirely as accurate as TruePlay for Apple users — which uses the built-in microphones of the iPhone or iPad and requires you to wave/walk the devices around the room — but it’s the best solution for Android that Sonos has ever offered.

Why Buy the Sonos Five?

Sonos

The Five is a better stereo speaker.

The Five is a wireless speaker that’s optimized for stereo sound — it has dedicated right, left and center channels and delivers a wider soundstage than the Era 300. Given the fact that pretty much any digital music file you stream is rendered for stereo, you know the Five is going to sound its best no matter what you play.

The other unique thing about the Five is that when you stand it up vertically, it switches from playing stereo to playing a mono sound. This isn’t really recommended when you only have one Five speaker, but if you have two stereo-paired Fives, standing both up vertically will turn them into true left- and right-channel speakers — this is the best stereo experience that Sonos offers.

The Five delivers deeper, more powerful bass.

The Five is a bigger speaker than the Era 300. It has more drivers, including three mid-woofers, and can deliver substantially more bass. So if you’re somebody who loves deep bass and you don’t plan on getting one of Sonos’s wireless subwoofers — which are expensive — to pair with your Sonos speaker, the Five is going to be your better bet.

The Five is a more straightforward speaker.

Let’s face it: Not everyone wants a smart speaker. They don’t want it listening in on their conversations. And yes, every one of Sonos’s smart speakers has a button that turns its built-in microphone off to prevent this, but it’s also really easy to accidentally turn that microphone back on when you don’t mean to. With the Five, you don’t have to worry about this. It can’t work as a smart speaker.

Sonos

Sonos Era 300

The Era 300 is a first-of-its-kind speaker for Sonos, specifically designed to play immersive audio that supports Dolby Atmos. It has six drivers: four tweeters (one forward-firing, two side-firing for stereo separation and an upward-firing tweeter that reflects sound off the ceiling) and two woofers. Compared to its closest sibling, the Five, the Era 300 is slightly smaller, cheaper and not quite as powerful.

Specs

Drivers	Four tweeters, two midwoofer
Amplification	Four tweeters, two midwooferAmplification: six Class-D digital amplifiers
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, line-in (via USB-C) AirPlay 2

• $449.00 at Sonos

Sonos

Sonos Five

Released in 2020, the Five is the largest and most hi-fi standalone speaker (that’s not a soundbar) that Sonos makes. It’s also pretty unique because it has a 3.5mm line-in connection so you can quickly connect it to an integrated turntable. And you can still pair two Fives together and place them vertically, which then designates them as right and left channels for great stereo sound.

Specs

Drivers	Three mid-woofers, three tweeters
Amplification	Six Class-D digital amplifiers
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Ethernet, 3.5mm audio line-in, AirPlay 2

• $549.00 at Sonos

Related Topics