Sonos Era 100 Smart Speaker Outperforms the Popular Sonos One

You can now play vinyl on Sonos’ smallest home speaker. That’s because the Era 100 also has a USB-C aux input, letting you plug a USB turntable into the optional Sonos Line-in adapter.

The Era 100 is available in black and white, and Sonos says it’s built with post-consumer plastics. And the new Sonos uses screws instead of glue in many places, which means the speaker can be repaired more easily and perhaps even updated. (The One had a midrun upgrade in which the processor and other electronics were improved while the speaker drivers stayed the same.)

Like Sonos’ other smart speakers, the Era 100 is platform-agnostic . . . to a point. It’s compatible with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple by way of AirPlay 2, as well as Sonos’ own digital assistant, Sonos Voice Control. It doesn’t support Google Assistant.

When the Era 100 hit the market, we bought one through regular retail channels and handed it over to the testers in our sound lab. They evaluated it for ease of use, versatility, and sound quality. Using a series of sophisticated references, they compared the model with not only the dozens of other smart speakers currently in our ratings (available to CR members) but also the hundreds of speakers tested in that same custom-built room, using the same music and the same methodology.