Club Benefits
I’ve been waiting for the Sonos Era 100 SL for a long time, I just hadn’t realized I’d been waiting for it. See, I use a pair of old Sonos Play:1 speakers as the left and right surrounds in a home theater setup in my back room. They’ve been overdue for an upgrade for years, but Sonos never made a speaker that fit the bill in terms of price-to-performance ratio — until now.
The Sonos Era 100 SL is the company’s most cost-effective speaker with an MSRP of $189/£169 — a tidy saving on the £199/$219 Sonos Era 100. In a year where everything simply seems to be going up in price, more affordable releases like this and Apple’s recent MacBook Neo are refreshing.
To keep the cost down, Sonos has trimmed the fat in a couple of ways. First, there’s no mic on the speaker and therefore no voice control. You can’t ask Sonos Voice Control or a third party like Alexa+ to set timers or answer questions for you. That suits me just fine — I need these speakers to round out a passive sound system, not to be an active participant in my smart home. However, if you pair the Sonos Era 100 SL with a voice-enabled soundbar you can still benefit from voice control that way. Getting rid of a feature I would never use anyway to save me more money is a win-win in my book.
Article continues belowBecause of the lack of microphone, there’s no Trueplay technology for Android phones. Instead, it’ll only work with an iOS device. If you’re using one of the best Android phones, this could be a deal-breaker —or at least a reason to pay more for the regular Era 100. But since I have access to an iOS device, this also isn’t a problem for me. Another tick in the plus column for the Era 100 SL.
If you lift the lid, the Era 100 SL has the same sonic architecture as the regular Era 100. When we reviewed that speaker in 2023, we gave it 4.5 stars, saying Sonos “Elevates the sound performance for its new entry-level home speaker with twin tweeters for stereo sound from a single cabinet, and a larger woofer for richer-sounding bass.”
Our reviewer said it was a noticeable step up from the Sonos One, and I can confirm it's absolutely streets ahead of my tired old Play:1 speakers. Bass at lower volumes is noticeably improved which works exceptionally well when you want to use it as part of a larger setup where the soundbar is doing the heavy lifting.
So Sonos is giving me better sound at a lower price by cutting features I either don’t use or aren’t affected by. Sign me up!
Setup is a dream
In the past, I’ve been critical of Sonos’ app and the general frustrations encountered in its software. The company has promised that those are a thing of the past and this is my first time setting up a new speaker on my system since the crisis of the new Sonos app back in 2024. The process couldn’t have been smoother and achieves almost Apple-levels of simplicity.
Once the speakers were plugged in, all I had to do was add them in the Sonos app and, once they were updated and linked to the Wi-Fi network, I was automatically asked if I wanted to group them in with my existing soundbar and mini sub.
It took all of about five minutes to add both speakers through the app, and there wasn’t a single hiccup during the entire process. Technology can all too easily become a rabbit hole of settings and configurations, but adding a pair of Era 100 SL to my setup was handled entirely in the app in a matter of minutes.
If you’re someone who doesn’t want to tweak and fiddle with a setup but would prefer to get on with watching your content with surround sound, I definitely recommend this.
Bottom line
Sonos is pitching the Era 100 SL as the entry to a Sonos home theater and I agree with that wholeheartedly. For example, the speaker doesn’t support Dolby Atmos spatial audio for music but does support Dolby Atmos and surround channels in a home theater setup. So, if you’re in the same boat as me and looking to build out a (or upgrade an elderly) Sonos system, you should stop reading right now and buy this speaker.
On the other hand, if you’re on the hunt for your first Sonos speaker primarily for music playback, it’s probably not the one to go for — even if it is affordable. For ultimate versatility, I would suggest looking at the brand new Sonos Play which gives you the benefit of both a home-based and portable Bluetooth speaker.
The Era 100 SL is a real return to form for Sonos, offering a really solid core performance whilst keeping the cost down by cutting away the window dressing. It would have been even nicer if the company had cut the cost even further through the double pack you can buy for $378, but perhaps that was one step too far.
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