We asked three people to listen to the Sonos Era 100 and Apple HomePod Gen 2 to see which they thought was the better smart speaker.
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00:00 I really like the sound quality on this a lot better.
00:02 (mimics music)
00:06 Next track.
00:06 - Oh, okay.
00:09 - Oh, nice.
00:12 - All right, let's see.
00:14 - So here we have two of the newest smart speakers around,
00:17 the Apple HomePod Generation 2 and the Sonos Aero 100.
00:21 The HomePod 2 costs $299, while the Aero 100 costs $249.
00:26 Both of these smart speakers have a lot
00:29 of the same capabilities,
00:30 but they do differ in a few different ways.
00:32 So let's take a look at both of them
00:35 to see which one might be right
00:36 for your home entertainment setup.
00:38 So let's start with the design.
00:39 You know, both of them are roughly the same height.
00:42 Obviously the Sonos is a little bit taller,
00:45 but if you look, they're both roughly the same diameter.
00:49 Aesthetically, it's sort of up to you which one you prefer.
00:52 Looking at the top of them,
00:54 there's a little stylistic differences.
00:56 Apple has this cool touchscreen that if you touch it,
00:59 it lights up and there's a plus and minus here.
01:02 You have to think about the directions
01:04 and controls you wanna do a little bit more.
01:06 For example, like to forward and skip tracks,
01:09 you have to double tap, whereas on the Aero 100,
01:13 there are specific buttons for play and pause
01:16 and skipping forward and back in tracks.
01:18 One other thing I do like about the Aero 100
01:20 is if you look on the back of it here,
01:23 there is a little switch to turn the microphone on and off.
01:27 That's something the HomePod 2 doesn't have.
01:29 So if you don't want Siri or Alexa listening to you,
01:32 you know it's not gonna listen to you on this one,
01:35 whereas on the HomePod, you have to make sure
01:37 that you tell Siri to stop listening.
01:39 One thing I also really like about the Sonos Aero 100
01:42 is that it has this USB-C port in the back.
01:45 Now you have to buy a separate adapter,
01:47 but if you do, you can also plug this directly
01:50 into ethernet or if you have a turntable,
01:52 you can plug a turntable directly into this thing
01:54 so you don't need a separate amp or anything like that
01:57 if you're gonna play your records straight through this.
02:00 On the other hand, the HomePod works much better
02:03 with your home entertainment system.
02:05 If you have an Apple TV 4K, you can use a HomePod
02:08 as the speaker output for your TV, which is pretty nice.
02:12 You can't do anything like that with the Sonos Aero 100.
02:15 Unfortunately, you have to upgrade
02:17 to one of Sonos' soundbars if you want to get
02:20 that sort of output from your TV.
02:22 Speaking of your home entertainment system,
02:24 the HomePod does have one other feature
02:27 that the Sonos Aero 100 lacks,
02:29 and that's the ability to play spatial audio.
02:32 So you can play Dolby Atmos tracks through the HomePod,
02:36 but you can't through the Sonos Aero 100.
02:40 If you want to do that with a Sonos product,
02:42 you're gonna have to upgrade to the Sonos Aero 300,
02:45 which costs $449.
02:46 If we take a look inside these speakers,
02:49 you'll notice a few key differences.
02:51 Both have one large woofer, but in the HomePod,
02:54 it's sort of in the middle and directed upwards.
02:57 In the Sonos 100, it's right about here,
03:00 and it's facing forward.
03:02 Also, the HomePod has an array of four different tweeters
03:07 all around the bottom, sort of facing upwards,
03:10 whereas in the Aero 100, there are two tweeters right here,
03:13 sort of facing this way.
03:15 What that means is that the HomePod is better
03:18 for listening wherever you happen to be in the room.
03:20 It provides 360-degree sound.
03:23 With the Aero 100, it's best if you stand
03:26 sort of in front of it to get the best audio.
03:29 When it comes to playing music through these smart speakers,
03:32 you get a lot more choices with Sonos
03:34 than you do with the HomePod.
03:37 With the HomePod, you can play music through Apple Music,
03:40 and then you can also use AirPlay and things like that.
03:43 But with the Sonos, it connects directly
03:46 to hundreds of different music sources,
03:49 from Spotify to TuneIn Radio to, I think it does MLB.com.
03:54 So if there's a music source out there,
03:58 chances are that you can stream it directly
04:00 through the Sonos, which is a nice little feature to have.
04:04 I would say the Sonos gives you a bit more flexibility
04:07 when it comes to being able to stream things
04:09 natively through it, rather than having to go through
04:12 AirPlay or Bluetooth or something like that
04:15 as you would with the HomePod.
04:17 And speaking of Bluetooth,
04:19 it's finally come to a Sonos product.
04:21 Yes, after years of not wanting to include it,
04:24 the Sonos Aero 100 actually has a Bluetooth connection.
04:28 So it's a lot easier if you have your phone,
04:30 you can simply beam your music straight to the device.
04:34 Now that's something that Apple has had with AirPlay 2
04:38 on its HomePod, but so there's a bit more parity there.
04:42 And then speaking of wireless connections,
04:44 the Sonos Aero 100 actually has Wi-Fi 6,
04:48 whereas the HomePod has older Wi-Fi 5.
04:51 What that means for you, maybe not too much right now,
04:54 but as you upgrade your home network to say a Wi-Fi 6 router
04:59 you'll be able to get better performance
05:00 out of your Sonos speaker,
05:02 because you'll be able to get greater bandwidth
05:04 and possibly greater fidelity
05:06 depending on the throughput you have.
05:09 Of course, these are smart speakers.
05:11 So they're more than just about playing music.
05:13 Both of them have smart assistants built into them
05:15 so you can do things like ask the weather,
05:17 change the lights, and control other smart home devices.
05:21 But they both differ in a few key ways.
05:24 For starters, let's talk about voice assistants.
05:27 The Apple HomePod, as you might expect,
05:28 only works with Siri.
05:30 The Sonos Aero 100 works with Amazon's Alexa,
05:34 as well as Sonos' own voice assistant,
05:37 which is far more limited.
05:39 It can only respond to requests
05:41 for different kinds of music.
05:43 Now, it's kind of interesting,
05:44 the earlier version of this, the Sonos One,
05:48 used to work with, or still does work with,
05:50 Alexa and Google Assistant,
05:52 but because of ongoing litigation between Sonos and Google,
05:56 the newer model only works with Alexa.
05:59 The HomePod has a few other smart home features built in.
06:02 It supports Matter, which is a new smart home standard
06:05 that'll allow you to connect other devices directly to it
06:10 without having to connect it to Wi-Fi first.
06:12 And the HomePod also has a temperature
06:15 and humidity sensor built into it,
06:17 so you can ask Siri, "Hey, what's the temperature
06:19 in the room?"
06:20 The Sonos Aero 100 doesn't have
06:22 any similar features built in,
06:24 but because it can work with Amazon's Alexa ecosystem,
06:28 you can connect far more smart home devices
06:31 than you can the HomePod.
06:32 Of course, the big question is which speaker sounds better?
06:35 To find out, we're gonna cover them with a little cloth,
06:38 and then we're gonna bring in a few people
06:40 to listen to both and tell us which they prefer.
06:43 - Hi, I'm Tony Polanco,
06:45 and I am a consumer, according to Brandon.
06:48 (laughing)
06:49 - I'm Elisa James.
06:50 I work for TechRadar as a US computing staff writer.
06:54 - I'm Marcus, and I'm a producer/director at Tom's Guide.
06:58 (upbeat music)
07:00 (opera music)
07:05 (opera music)
07:08 - Which one did you prefer?
07:34 - Oh, the second one.
07:35 Here's the thing, I think both of them are really,
07:38 they're really good, but the second one,
07:40 it seemed like there's a better balance between everything.
07:44 Although I could clearly hear everything
07:46 that was going on in both of them, especially.
07:48 Even though the foreground stuff was in your face,
07:52 I tried to see which one produced the background
07:55 a little better.
07:56 This one did, but especially when the really high notes hit,
07:59 this one didn't seem as piercing.
08:02 Like, it was a little bit more balanced
08:04 than the first one was.
08:05 - Which one did you like better?
08:06 - I'm gonna go with this one.
08:07 - Yeah, and how come?
08:09 - I feel like the sound quality was a little cleaner
08:12 and like, crisp.
08:13 This one wasn't bad, but I'm not sure how to describe it,
08:18 but it was kind of like, a little crackly, maybe,
08:22 in the background.
08:23 Like, it wasn't very, it wasn't as clear,
08:27 like the sound quality as this one, I feel like.
08:29 - All right. - Interesting.
08:32 Okay, what do you think?
08:33 - Okay, so my immediate reaction is that the second one,
08:38 this one, felt bassier.
08:41 It felt like a little richer.
08:44 Everything was a little higher on the first one.
08:47 That was kind of the main difference, I think, what I felt.
08:52 Yeah.
08:54 - Did you prefer one or the other?
08:56 - I think I probably, yeah, preferred number two
08:57 for that reason.
08:58 It just sounded deeper and a little bassier
09:01 and a little more well-rounded.
09:03 - Okay.
09:04 (dramatic music)
09:11 (dramatic music)
09:13 (dramatic music)
09:16 (dramatic music)
09:19 (dramatic music)
09:22 (dramatic music)
09:27 (dramatic music)
09:36 (dramatic music)
09:43 (dramatic music)
09:46 - Again, I thought this one was gonna be hard to beat.
09:57 It just sounded really good, punchy,
09:58 but this one has more bass to it, which I like.
10:02 I still think that the mids were better on this one,
10:04 but, you know, this one, not so much,
10:07 but like the bass was just so booming
10:09 and I wanna hear it with a song like that,
10:11 so I prefer this one.
10:12 So I'm still gonna say this one,
10:14 but interestingly, I was kind of tempted
10:18 to say this one at first because like,
10:21 with this theme, I'm used to hearing
10:23 like that sort of sound quality
10:25 since it's such an old like theme.
10:28 So it sounded, you know, very nostalgic to me.
10:31 But then with this, it's just,
10:32 I get to hear things like the very intensity
10:37 of like the drum pounds, like once again,
10:40 the complexity and like that, or archaic, like swelling,
10:44 you know, just a lot of stuff that like,
10:47 I don't hear in this, you know,
10:49 but I was able to pick out through this
10:50 because it's just so clear.
10:52 - I feel kind of similar.
10:54 They sounded more alike that time, I think.
10:58 The only main difference I noticed is
11:02 after the two goes through,
11:04 the first speaker seemed to really distort
11:07 and I don't know if it was just a little bit louder
11:09 or a kind of, but it was seemed like it was struggling.
11:11 But then also that did kind of happen slightly later
11:13 on the second one as well.
11:16 - Yeah. - Let's see.
11:17 - Okay, ready? - Yeah.
11:19 Oh, wow, Apple, you got me.
11:22 You should be happy about that.
11:24 - Oh, wow.
11:27 - So yeah, you picked the Apple HomePod.
11:30 - Oh, wow.
11:31 - Yep. - Okay.
11:32 - With the Sonos Aero 100.
11:35 Let's see what you picked.
11:36 - Yeah, go on.
11:38 - Oh, okay.
11:40 I didn't know what the Sonos looked like,
11:42 so I was assuming it was the other way around.
11:44 That's quite interesting.
11:45 - So there you have it.
11:46 In a taste test, if you will, of the Apple HomePod 2
11:50 and the Sonos Aero 100, we have a split decision.
11:54 Two of our testers preferred the HomePod,
11:57 one of them preferred the Sonos.
11:59 I'm gonna have to listen to it a little bit more
12:02 before I come to a final decision
12:03 on which one I prefer better.
12:06 But there are certainly advantages to both speakers.
12:10 This one is great if you're in the Apple ecosystem
12:13 and you wanna connect it to your home entertainment system.
12:16 This one might be the better option
12:18 if you have a lot of streaming music sources
12:20 or you wanna hook it up to, say, your turntable.
12:23 So there are pros and cons to both,
12:25 and it's really gonna be up to you to decide
12:28 which features that you want the most.
12:31 To check out our full review of the Sonos Aero 100,
12:34 the Apple HomePod 2, as well as countless other phones,
12:38 TVs, and other consumer electronics,
12:40 be sure to check us out at tomsguide.com.
12:43 And be sure to subscribe to our channel
12:45 on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
12:48 For Tom's Guide, this is Mike Prospero.