A New "Era" of Sonos Speakers

Optimo is a better name.  Era just doesn’t roll of the tongue.  Is it “Air-Ah” or “Ear-Ah”?  I get that this is supposed to be start of a new era of Sonos speakers, but that doesn’t mean you have to name the product such.  I guess Optimo was just one too many syllables.

Didn’t see any other new info about the speakers themselves.

Also, a Move Gen 2 is not terribly surprising.  Besides 4 years since Gen 1 release, there are clearly some easy features to adopt that Roam already has.  I suspect their won’t be a new form factor or significant change in battery.  But it would be rather impressive if the Move uses some of the new woofer tech they bought to improve audio in a smaller (or same) size, which should also improve battery life?

Likely there will be a radio upgrade too.

Wanted to add  that my big question on the Optimo...I mean Era, is whether or not these can be use for home theatre and how exactly that would work.

I fear though that the Era 300 is not a Five equivalent, but more directly competing against Homepod in terms of audio and price.   That would be disappointing.

I haven’t heard the latest HomePod (yet), but I still personally think the Sonos One sounded better than the original HomePod, which I’ve always thought lacked clarity and sounded a little fuzzy, particularly in its mid-high range. My son-in-law has the original HomePod and he has switched to Sonos after hearing things side-by-side. The ‘One’ is much clearer/crispier sounding to my old ears.

I couldn’t actually gauge the size of the Optima/Era from the ‘rendered’ orangey image that The Verge posted some time ago, but it always struck me as being around the size of the old (discontinued) Play: 3 or somewhere between that and a Play: 5/Five - so if I had been asked to guess it’s name, I would have said a ‘Sonos Four’ - so that’s another wrong guess (yet again) on my part.. huh! 🙅 

Very excited for this. Hoping that the Era 100 delivers the Atmos sound that we’ve been lacking from the Sonos home theater system since the debut of the Arc. 

I think that’s the point though, no? The ‘300’ I think is a direct reference to the Play:3, which would be the Homepod competitor. Sonos has an empty slot at that price point, so this year would be a good time to launch something, particularly with Apple bringing back the HomePod. 

If, and I use that word specifically, because The Verge has been wrong in the past, the Era 100 has some upward firing component, I would be willing to consider using the PLAY:1s I have as surrounds elsewhere, and getting a set of Era 100s for surrounds duty. But that means more bandwidth needs, as the Era 100s would need two streams, not just the surround stream of data, but also the disparates streams of Atmos, a whole ‘nother’ thing.  

I just bought an Arc in December and then 3 Ones and this last Saturday a Sub and a 4th One.  

How long should I expect these to continue to be supported now that something new is on the way?

We don’t know. Units sold in 2005 are still viable, although they cannot support the latest features.

Just wonder if these new speakers can be added to the home theatre system to make it more complete…

We won’t know that, either, until Sonos makes the announcement, which usually happens within several weeks of the actual release. I wouldn’t expect too much too soon, this is a ‘leak’, and not an announcement.

To date, only the portable Sonos speakers, the Roam and the Move, are unable to be used as surround speakers.