Not Amazon Echo, Not Apple HomePod: This Smart Speaker Gets Consumer Reports' Top Rating

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A great smart speaker should be more than just a puck-or globe-shaped device you use to compile your weekly grocery list. Ecosystem assistants are a staple of an Alexa or Google-powered smart home, and these digital companions can manage everything from lighting and temperature controls to music streaming, calendar events, and daily to-dos. But the greatest smart speakers also sound fantastic, and according to Consumer Reports (CR), the one internet-connected speaker that rises above the rest is the Sonos Era 300.

Sonos has two options in its modern wireless speaker lineup, and the Era 300 is the larger of the two (the Era 100 is the smaller). Billed as a 3.0.1 multi-channel system, the Era 300 delivers full-bodied sound, with plenty of low end and solid treble-range articulation. Featuring Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the former is required to set up the Era 300 via the Sonos app, but the mobile software also gives you numerous options for audio customization, speaker grouping, and music streaming. CR thinks the user interface is fairly intuitive, and that the most important controls and features are easy to locate.

The Era 300 doesn't support Google Home, but does support Alexa and the Sonos voice assistant, as well as AirPlay 2. The speaker's built-in mics do a solid job at capturing voice commands in medium to large-sized listening spaces, and you can further tune the speaker's sound with Sonos' Trueplay calibration tool. Doing so may not even be necessary, though; What Hi-Fi gave the Era 300 a perfect 5/5 score, and described its default sound as "detailed, spacious, dynamic, and cohesive."

Praise for the Era 300 can be found just about anywhere consumer tech is sold. On Amazon, the smart speaker scored 4.6 out of 5 stars (based on over 1,200 reviews), and the overwhelming majority were five stars. People love the way the Era 300 sounds, and how easy it is to set up and control. That said, we read a thoughtful three-star review that made a great point: Sonos should let customers use two paired Era 300 speakers as a complete home theater.

Right now, the Sonos app only lets you group two Era 300 speakers for widened stereo playback. You can also pair two Era 300s to a Sonos Arc Ultra or Sonos Beam (Gen 2), but this ends up sidelining the speakers' full potential (it turns them into glorified effects channels). This same user mentioned that the Sonos app can be occasionally glitchy too, an issue expressed by other Amazon shoppers, and even CR. It's also worth mentioning that if you'd like to use the Era 300 for wired playback, you'll need to purchase the USB-C adapter separately.

While the Amazon Echo Studio and Apple HomePod are great choices for a smart speaker, it's hard to top the spatial immersion and versatility of the Sonos Era 300. Whether you plan on using it to stream your favorite Spotify playlists or to use its Bluetooth 5.0 connection to boost audio from a YouTube video, CR knows what it's talking about when they bestow top honors on this powerful Sonos speaker.