Sonos One Vs. Bose Home Speaker 300: Which Is Better?

11.9KShares

426.7KViews

Sonos One Vs Bose Home Speaker 300 – The rise of virtual assistants such as Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa has spawned a slew of smart speakers. The category’s crammed with hands-free devices that play music, control your smart home, set alarms, etc.

There’s no question that Sonos makes one of the best home speakers on the market, with its popular Sonos One speaker topping best-of lists for its sleek design and well-balanced sound. But audio giant Bose is quickly coming for the home speaker throne, with their top-rated Bose Home Speaker 300.

So which is better? And which speaker is the smarter choice for those who want to build out a killer multi-room system? Read on, and we’ll see how these wireless wonders stack up against each other, from sound quality, features, and usability.

Build

Bose-home-speaker-300-vs-sonos-one-jpg.jpg

COPYRIGHT_NOVA: Published on https://www.novabach.com/i/sonos-one-vs-bose-home-speaker-300/ by Daniel Barrett on 2022-05-21T22:25:02.000Z

Bose and Sonos both occupy the ‘premium audio’ space, so solid build quality is the order of the day here. Design-wise, they’re pretty similar. Both are around 16cm tall and designed to blend into their surroundings.

The Sonos One features a black or white grille, depending on the color of the speaker you’ve chosen, with a touch-sensitive control panel on top.

Sonos has the jump on Bose when it comes to wireless audio tech – it’s been in the multi-room game since 2002 and knows a thing or two about streaming. We found the Sonos extremely reliable, so you’re unlikely to experience any wireless issues.

The Bose scores over its rival with six handy preset on the top panel, which you can program to trigger your favorite radio stations or streaming services. A useful touch for those who aren’t wedded to voice controls.

Winner: Draw

Pairing

When comparing the Bose Home Speaker vs. Sonos, both speakers deliver pristine audio and built-in voice controls via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. But Bose is better than Sonos when it comes to pairing and connectivity. For example, while the Sonos One can only play songs over WiFi or AirPlay 2, Bose lets you stream music via WiFi, AirPlay, and Bluetooth. This means easy pairing from your phone or connected device to stream favorite songs, albums, and playlists without worrying about a bad internet connection leading to skips and stuttering.

The Sonos One impresses in other areas, though. Namely, support over 50 different audio streaming services, including Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, TuneIn, Audible and Amazon Music. In addition, they all support voice controls out of the box, making Sonos One the best choice for music streaming fans. Point for Sonos.

The Bose is stacked with features, including support for Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and TuneIn, all of which are integrated for seamless use. In addition, the Bose Music app holds your music in one place, which makes it easy to flick between radio and streaming services without launching separate apps.

Unfortunately for Bose, the Sonos app remains the best in the business for usability and for bringing practically every streaming service (and your stored tunes) together under one roof. Spotify Connect is on board, too. Simply put, the Sonos app wins the day.

Winner: Sonos One

Sound

The Sonos One boasts two Class-D digital amplifiers tuned to match one tweeter and one midrange woofer. The resulting sound is impressive: weighty, full-bodied, and engaging. Treble is crisp and clear; vocals are given space to breathe. Overall, the Sonos offers sophisticated and natural sound for the money.

How does the Bose measure up? Well, there are some big pluses. The scale and weight of the sound outshine most other speakers of similar dimensions, and there’s little trace of hardness – even with the volume cranked up to the ceiling.

But compared to Sonos One, the Bose lacks dynamic range and timing. As a result, it saps rhythms of their energy and leaves melodies sounding a touch dull.

If you want the best sound quality, make a beeline for the sparkling Sonos – it’s one of the most sonically advanced voice-assisted speakers for the money and certainly the better sounding speaker here.

Winner: Sonos One

Price

There’s a $50 price difference between these two smart speakers. The Sonos One costs $199, while the Bose Home Speaker 300 sells for $259.

The Bose Home Speaker 300 is on sale for just $199 on Amazon — a $60 discount from its regular price of $259.99. It’s the cheapest price we’ve seen for the Bose Home 300 and puts it in line with the current $199 price of the Sonos One.

Winner: Sonos One

Bottom Line

The Sonos One has cemented its place as one of the best smart speakers on the market. The sleek functionality, ease of use, near-endless streaming options, and sonic ability make it a no-brainer.

The Bose Home Speaker 300 has a similarly-impressive feature set, but the Bose app, while intuitive, lacks functionality.