Sonos Era 100 Review: Still the Small Sonos to Buy at £179–£199?
The Era 100 is now three and a half years old, £50 cheaper than at launch, and since March 2026 it has a cheaper sibling with no microphones. Testers still rate the sound. The open questions are the app, which Sonos broke in 2024, and whether you need the voice features enough to pay over the Era 100 SL.
Where the reviews line up
Our evidence comes from three places: a hands-on test by Expert Reviews, owners’ threads on the Sonos Community forum, and the rating blocks at John Lewis and Currys, which add up to 249 buyer reviews. On the sound they agree. On the software they do not.
It sounds big for its size. Expert Reviews calls it “fantastically competent”, with more body in the mids than Apple’s HomePod. TechRadar, our cross-check, liked the clarity but found the bass a little loose and heavy-handed. The stereo is a hint, not a spread. It has two angled tweeters, but both testers struggled to hear clear left and right from one speaker. For real stereo you need a pair.
The app is better, but not fixed for everyone. Sonos’s 2024 app relaunch cost its chief executive his job, and his successor says software quality has been restored. Owners were still posting Era 100 drop-out threads on Sonos’s forum in 2025, and Headphonesty reported in early 2026 that the complaints had not stopped.
The buying decision is mostly about the microphones. Sonos’s own price is £199, cut from £249 in April 2025. John Lewis has it at £179 today. The Era 100 SL has the same speaker without the mics or Alexa and launched at £169. If you will never talk to it, the SL does the same job. If you want Alexa built in, buy the Era 100. Google Assistant is not available on either.
The three reviews this summary is built from
- Expert ReviewsHands-on test by Jonathan Bray, May 2023, at the old £249 price. TechRadar’s March 2023 review used as a cross-check.
- Sonos CommunitySonos’s own owners’ forum. Eight Era 100 threads about drop-outs and Wi-Fi in one search. The one we opened had a single reply, so this is a pattern, not a statistic.
- John Lewis & Currys4.3/5 from 157 reviews and 4.6/5 from 92, checked 8 October 2026, on pages that sell the speaker.
Before the review: Era 100, Era 100 SL or Era 100 Pro?
Three products carry the name now. This page covers the Era 100, which is still sold new by Sonos UK at £199 in black or white. The Era 100 SL (£169 at launch, on sale from 31 March 2026) keeps the design and the sound, but has no microphones and so no voice control. The Era 100 Pro is a version sold only through installers. Check which one a listing is actually selling, because the SL and the standard model look identical.
Specification at a glance
| Spec | Figure | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Drivers and amps | One mid-woofer, two angled tweeters, three class-D amplifiers | Sonos UK product page |
| Tweeter angle | Tweeters 100° apart; waveguides spread sound over 270° in total | TechRadar, quoting Sonos |
| Woofer | 25% larger than the Sonos One’s | Sonos claim, repeated by Smart Home Sounds and TechRadar |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6, 2.4 and 5 GHz. No Ethernet port and no SonosNet | Sonos; SonosNet point from Smart Home Sounds |
| Bluetooth | 5.3 (Sonos, Smart Home Sounds) · 5.0 at launch, possibly upgradable to 5.2 (TechRadar, March 2023) | Sources disagree; Sonos’s current page says 5.3 |
| Line-in | USB-C, needs the Sonos Line-In Adapter, £19, cable not included. Line-in plus Ethernet adapter from £39 | Sonos UK shop; Smart Home Sounds |
| AirPlay | AirPlay 2, iOS 11.4 or later | Sonos |
| Voice | Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control. No Google Assistant | Sonos; Expert Reviews; TechRadar |
| Microphones | Far-field array; rear switch cuts power to them | Sonos |
| Idle power | 1.86 W at 230 V | Sonos support, “Power Consumption While Idle” |
| Idle cost per year (ours) | About £4.29 if left idle 24 hours a day (16.3 kWh) | Our sums at 26.32p/kWh, the October 2026 cap |
| Dimensions | 182.5 × 120 × 130.5 mm (H × W × D) | Sonos. John Lewis lists 183.5 × 131.7 × 120 mm, with width and depth swapped |
| Weight | 2.02 kg | Sonos and John Lewis; Expert Reviews rounds to 2 kg |
| Power cable | 2 m, internal power supply | Sonos |
| Guarantee | 2 years | Currys and John Lewis listings. Sonos’s page does not state the length |
| RRP | £199 (launched at £249, cut permanently in April 2025) | Sonos UK; TechRadar, 3 April 2025 |
| Live UK prices | £179 John Lewis · £199 Currys · £179 Smart Home Sounds (was £199) | Checked 8 October 2026 |
Expert Reviews
Who they are: Head of reviews at Expert Reviews, Jonathan Bray has tested hundreds of laptops, smartphones, vacuum cleaners, coffee machines, doorbells and more, with earlier work for PC Pro, Computer Buyer and Trusted Reviews — a senior, hands-on consumer-tech tester.
Expert Reviews lived with the speaker and compared it directly with Apple’s HomePod. The HomePod digs deeper in the bass, but the Era 100 has more body through the mids and more solidity in the upper bass, with crisp detail at the top. The weak spot is stereo. Despite the two angled tweeters, Bray struggled to separate left and right channels on tracks recorded with very distinct ones, and calls the effect “not very convincing”. TechRadar’s Matt Bolton reached the same verdict independently. He heard only a subtle stereo effect, plus bass he found a little loose, and scored it 3.5/5 for value at the old price.
The useful practical findings are about tuning. Trueplay’s quick mode works with any phone. The advanced mode, which has you walk round the room for about a minute, gave tighter bass and more space, while quick mode left the mids slightly “tubby”. Beyond that you get only bass, treble and loudness controls. Bray also notes that “Hey Sonos” cannot search Spotify, so you need Alexa for that, and that an Era 100 cannot be stereo-paired with an older Sonos One. His main criticism was the £249 price. Sonos has since cut it to £199, and retailers sell it for less.
Watch: Full Review of Sonos Era 100 & Era 300
A combined review of the Era 100 and the larger Era 300. Skip the Era 300 sections if you are only weighing up this speaker.
Watch on YouTube ↗ Independent YouTube video — not made by or for Shopbam.Sonos Community
Who they are: Sonos Community is the brand-hosted support forum where Sonos owners report problems and staff sometimes reply; posts are unverified owner experience and skew towards people with faults, so we look for recurring issues rather than read it as typical.
This is where you find out what living with Sonos is like after the reviews. A single search of the forum turned up eight separate Era 100 threads about drop-outs, cutting out and Wi-Fi, with titles such as “Era 100 keeps disconnecting – so annoying”, “My Era 100 keeps disconnecting” and “Sonos app won’t reconnect my Era 100”. A typical case from July 2025: an owner with three older One SLs added two Era 100s on a Ubiquiti mesh network, and only the new speakers kept vanishing. The one reply pointed to a community guide for Sonos on Ubiquiti networks. No staff member answered and the thread was closed. These threads are self-selected and tiny, so read them as a warning sign, not a failure rate.
The background is the app. Sonos launched a rebuilt app in 2024 with missing features and laggy volume. Headphonesty reports that it cost around $200 million in revenue, and chief executive Patrick Spence resigned in January 2025. His successor, Tom Conrad, said in late 2025 that software quality had been restored. In March 2026 Sonos began opt-in testing of a further redesign, but Headphonesty notes that forum users were still reporting drop-outs, and that Conrad has given no crash figures to back his claim. In another thread Sonos’s list price came up: an October 2024 poster saw £249 where he remembered £199. The answer was discount codes. The permanent cut to £199 came in April 2025.
Watch: Sonos Era 100 Review - 1 Year Later, Is It Worth It?
A year-of-ownership view, the closest thing in video to the forum’s long-term experience. Likely filmed before the 2025 price cut.
Watch on YouTube ↗ Independent YouTube video — not made by or for Shopbam.John Lewis and Currys
Who they are: John Lewis’ ratings are moderated by PowerReviews and include labelled free-product and prize-draw reviews; Currys’ are invited from buyers and moderated by Feefo with no incentives offered — both are satisfaction scores from customers, not performance tests.
These are ratings hosted by the shops selling the speaker, so we quote the numbers, not a verdict. Together they come to 249 reviews and are fairly consistent. Neither page shows its review text to our tools, so we cannot tell you what the lower scores complain about. Given the forum threads above, we would guess connection problems, but that is our guess, not their evidence.
The listings are more useful for the purchase details. John Lewis has the white model at £179, marked as price-matched, with a two-year guarantee. Currys is at the full £199, also with two years. Specialists go further: Richer Sounds and Smart Home Sounds both include a six-year guarantee of their own, and Richer Sounds sells a pair for £349, or £358 bought separately. If you are buying two for stereo, that extra cover is worth more than a few pounds off.
Watch: Sonos Era 100 Review: The Ultimate Smart Speaker?
Embedded in UK retailer Smart Home Sounds’ written review, so treat it as retailer-adjacent. Good for seeing the size and the top touch controls.
Watch on YouTube ↗ Independent YouTube video — not made by or for Shopbam.Strengths and weak points
What holds up
- Sound well beyond its 18 cm height, with more body than a HomePod in the mids (Expert Reviews).
- Bluetooth, AirPlay 2 and Wi-Fi 6 in one box, so guests can play to it without the app.
- A physical switch that cuts power to the microphones.
- Low idle draw: 1.86 W, about £4.29 a year left on all the time (our sums).
- Trueplay room tuning now works on Android as well as iPhone.
- £50 cheaper than at launch, and often £20 under list price at retailers.
What people complain about
- No Google Assistant, and “Hey Sonos” cannot search Spotify.
- Stereo from one speaker is only a hint, according to both testers.
- Line-in and Ethernet need extra adapters (£19 to £39); there is no port on the back.
- No SonosNet, and some forum owners report it dropping out of their system.
- The app’s 2024 damage is not fully repaired in owners’ eyes.
- Bluetooth and line-in are disabled when it is used as a soundbar’s rear speaker (Smart Home Sounds).
Who it actually suits
Buy it if you want one small speaker for a kitchen, bedroom or study that sounds bigger than it looks and can grow into a multi-room system later. Buy it too if you want Alexa built in. An Echo Dot Max is far cheaper for voice and timers, but it is not in the same league for music. It also works as rear speakers behind a Sonos soundbar under a big TV such as the LG C4 or the Hisense U7S Pro. Note that the line-in is not meant for a TV, and a single Era 100 is no substitute for a soundbar.
Look elsewhere if you use Google Assistant, if you will never talk to your speaker (the Era 100 SL is the same sound for less), or if you would rather not troubleshoot Wi-Fi drop-outs (one forum case involved a Ubiquiti mesh network). If what you want is quiet listening at bedtime with no screens, an e-reader like the Kindle Paperwhite paired with Bluetooth headphones may suit you better than any speaker.
What we could not check
- Power draw while playing. Sonos publishes only the 1.86 W idle figure. We found no metered reading at normal volume, so our £4.29 a year covers standby only.
- Sonos’s own warranty length. The UK product page does not state it. The two-year figure comes from the Currys and John Lewis listings. Sonos did add a year’s extension for units bought between 2 October 2022 and 1 October 2024.
- What buyers actually wrote. John Lewis and Currys showed us the scores and counts but not the review text, and Amazon blocks our tools.
- Bluetooth version. Sonos’s page now says 5.3; TechRadar’s launch review said 5.0. A firmware update might explain the gap, but we could not confirm that.
- Whether the app problems are fixed for you. Forum threads are self-selected and small, and Sonos has published no reliability data. We cannot give you a failure rate.
- The videos. All three were confirmed by search listings showing their exact titles, not by opening them, and the listings did not name the channels. Search results also showed Smart Home Sounds’ written review embedding one of them.
- Independent testing after the 2025 price cut. Both editorial tests date from 2023 at £249. Nothing suggests the hardware has changed, but nobody has re-tested it.
Sources last checked 8 October 2026. Prices move often on Sonos gear, especially around Black Friday. Running costs use the 26.32p/kWh price cap for October 2026, and your tariff may differ. Check whether a listing is the Era 100 or the Era 100 SL before ordering.