Sonos Era 100 SL review: the starting Sonos speaker everyone should buy

An impulse buy for $189

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🏆 Review score: 5 out of 5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 🤑 Irresistible $189 price makes this speaker an impulse buy for Sonos newcomers and diehards

• 🔊 True stereo sound and punchy bass from a compact speaker unit

• 📻 Better with two speakers connected into a stereo pair

• 📲 Manual acoustic tuning with TruePlay on an iPhone

• 🛜 Bluetooth is handy for guests to quickly connect to the speaker

• 🎶 Lossless audio streaming over Wi-Fi

❌ Cons

• 🥁 Bass loses nuance while balancing low-mids notes with heavy bass

• 📵 TruePlay only works with iPhones, sorry Android users

• 💽 Turntables and other hardwired audio connections require a $19 dongle

The Shortcut Review

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

The $189 Sonos Era 100 SL is the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth speaker to buy if you’ve been on the fence about buying into Sonos’ ecosystem or just want to expand your already burgeoning system. This Speech Less version of the original Sonos Era 100 is $20 cheaper and only lacks the internal microphones that allowed the original smart speaker to auto-tune itself and listen to your voice commands. Aside from that, this speaker offers the same fantastic, true stereo sound experience and a surprising punch of bass from a compact speaker.

Although this isn’t a “true smart speaker” anymore, the Sonos Era 100 SL is still more intelligent than your average Bluetooth speaker. It still uses Wi-Fi and AirPlay 2 to stream Lossless music and connect with other Sonos speakers on your network. You can also fully control the speaker from the Sonos app, and you use TruePlay on an iPhone (sorry, Android users) to manually acoustically autotune the speaker to its surroundings.

For $189, the Sonos Era 100 SL is an impulse buy if you’ve been a little curious about Sonos speakers. It’s one of the cheapest ways to break into the system. If you’ve already bought into the Sonos ecosystem, the Era 100 SL is the perfect speaker to add a second stereo pair, extra rear surrounds for your home entertainment system, or another speaker for another room. And if you want a speaker you can take outside of home, check out the Sonos Play.

Full Review

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🤑 Irresistible price. The $189 Sonos Era 100 SL is the speaker to get if you’ve been on the fence about joining the Sonos ecosystem. This sub-$200 price makes it more competitive against higher-priced options like the $299 Apple HomePod 2, and it delivers much better sound than the $219 Amazon Echo Studio. The Era 100 SL could be a great starting point for adding another Sonos speaker to create a stereo pair, or repurposing it as a rear surround speaker once you’ve picked up a Sonos soundbar. And if this ends up being the only Sonos speaker you buy, you won’t be out of pocket too much after spending just $189 – or possibly less this Black Friday.

📻 Stereo sound in one. The Sonos Era 100 SL packs true stereo sound and a decently sized midwoofer into a single speaker. The actual stereo separation isn’t huge, but the Era 100 SL’s two tweeters prevent vocals and instrumentals from being muddled when produced by a mono speaker. Rather, this speaker makes tracks sound clear and detailed, allowing me to really enjoy full-bodied and complex tracks like “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

It’s all touch controls on the Sonos Era 100 SL (credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🥁 Thumping bass. The Sonos Era 100 SL also produces surprisingly punchy bass for a speaker of its size. It produces that satisfying, vibrating bassline you want from songs like “...Not Like Us” and “Derezzed.” However, if you’re expecting nuance and impressive low-frequency depth, the Era 100 SL is slightly more disappointing. The speaker struggles to balance low-midrange and pure bass tones in songs with deeper vocals, such as Allie X’s “Black Eye.”

💃Two to tango. If you want even more stereo separation and immersive sound experience, pair the Era 100 SL with another Sonos speaker. I’ve been testing the Sonos Era 100 SL paired with an Era 100 for more than a week, and it’s been pure bliss. A single Era 100 SL produces clear, detailed sound, but with two, you can hear even more nuances as the speaker unit combines its stereo mix into a single larger channel.

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🫢 Speech Less. Literally the only thing the Era 100 SL lacks over the regular Era 100 is a built-in microphone, which was used to make it “smart” and self-tune itself. That’s not a huge loss if you rarely use voice commands with your speaker or have an iPhone for TruePlay tuning. I see this as an even smaller loss, considering the Era 100 only supports Amazon Alexa or Sonos’ own smart assistant, and even then, it was only useful for basic playback controls.

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

📲 TruePlay with an iPhone. While the Sonos Era 100 SL doesn’t have microphones to listen and tune itself, you can use the iPhone to listen and manually optimize its output. All you need to start the process is to run the Sonos app on an iOS device. Simply go through the menus, and it takes less than 30 seconds, and you only need to repeat this process whenever you physically reposition the Sonos Era 100 SL.

The only wiggle you can’t get the TruePlay tuning on Android phones – hopefully Sonos will continue its streak of adding features after release, as it did for the Sonos Ace. Until then, Android users will be better served by the smarter Sonos Era 100. Alternatively, Denon’s latest family of Home speakers, which support Hi-Fi Bluetooth streaming and have a more platform-agnostic HEOS app.

(credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🛜 Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The Sonos Era 100 SL offers a flexible way to connect via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Bluetooth is super handy if your friends or family want to quickly play a song on your speaker. Wi-Fi is really what you’ll want to use to play music on the Sonos Era 100 SL, as it’ll play lossless music from Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal at full quality.

🔌 USB-C for everything else. There’s also a USB-C port at the back of the Era 100 SL for line-in connections – though you’ll need an optional $19 dongle to make the connection. This port carries audio only, and it’s useful if you want to connect a record player or anything else with an AUX connector.

The Sonos Era 100 SL (left) and Era 100 (right) are almost identical (credit: Kevin Lee / The Shortcut)

🗝️ Simple and clean. The Sonos Era 100 SL has the same exact design and speaker housing as the regular Sonos Era 100, and that’s a good thing. Its simple cylindrical shape and clean face don’t call much attention, allowing it to subtly blend in with the rest of your decor. It’s fairly compact, with 7.2 x 4.7 x 5.1-inch dimensions, so you can put this roughly coffee-can-sized speaker on small shelves or even the highest tier of a corner shelf.

Should you buy the Sonos Era 100 SL?

✅ Yes, if…

• 🤔 You’ve been on the fence about buying your first Sonos speaker

• 🎵 You want to hear true stereo sound and punchy bass for just $189

• 📻 You own a Sonos Era 100 or another Sonos speaker already

• 🤖 Smart speakers always listening worried you

❌ No, if…

• 🗣️ You’re looking for a smart speaker you can talk to (get the $199 Sonos Era 100 instead)

• 📵 You’re a full-time Android phone user (get the $299 Denon Home 200 instead)

• 🎒 You want a speaker that you can take outside with you (get the $299 Sonos Play instead)

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.