Desperate for publicity, Sonos has jumped on the ‘leaks’ marketing bandwagon, with their favourite publication The Verge given access to new images of their Sonos Era 300, which is tipped to sell in Australia for around $799.

The bad news for Sonos is that, in the future, their speakers could be denied access to Google Assistant, making it difficult for Sonos speaker owners who have other home automation products connected via Google Home to integrate their speakers into a Google ecosystem.

Sonos are due in Court in the US shortly, after the business was sued by Google.

Google is suing Sonos (again) over patent infringement. This time Google is claiming violation by Sonos of various patents involving keyword detection, charging using “technologies invented by Google”, and determining what speaker from a group should respond to the keyword.

The business is also under pressure from Apple, who recently launched their new Apple HomePod (2nd generation) smart speaker that also has spatial audio built in. Sonos has leaked, at the expense of other media, images of their new speaker which will launch in March. There is also a small Era 100, with questions now being raised as to what will happen to the US Company’s current range of speaker.

Currently the Sonos five is selling for $799 at JB Hi-Fi, with insiders confirming this model “will at this stage” stay in the range.

The speaker size of the new Era 300 falls between the current Sonos One and Sonos Five.

It includes a total of six drivers that direct sound forward, left, right and up. When used with either the Arc or Beam (Gen 2) as rear surrounds, a stereo pair of Era 300s will deliver immersive Atmos surround sound, including upward-firing audio.

Set to disappear from the Sonos line-up is the Sonos One, replaced by the Era 100, which is tipped to sell for $499. Currently, the Sonos One is selling for $289.

The Verge claims that although the Era 300 was designed from the ground up to highlight music in spatial audio, Apple Music’s tens of thousands of Dolby Atmos songs are unlikely to be supported at this time.

Unlike the Sonos One, the Era 100 will include Bluetooth audio playback and USB-C in line. This will allow users to run external sources like a turntable directly through an Era 100, which wasn’t possible with its predecessor.

Both Era speakers will include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and support for AirPlay 2.

Sonos will separately sell a line-in adapter for USB-C audio and a “combo adapter” for plugging in over ethernet. There’s no built-in jack on either device.

The bad news is that the Era 100 isn’t geared for spatial audio and will not include upward-firing drivers.

The Verge claims that the best way to think of it as an evolved Sonos One. Let’s hope it delivers better sound.

The company has added a second tweeter to the new speaker for true stereo sound and enlarged the mid-woofer for more powerful bass response.

Both speakers will feature a new speech bubble button among the standard Sonos controls that lets you temporarily mute the built-in microphones. There’s also a physical switch on the back of each that disconnects power to the mics completely.

Voice assistant options should include Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa;. It is unclear at this stage whether Google Assistant will continue to be supported.

The Era 300 and Era 100 will mark the first time Sonos supports Trueplay tuning on Android phones.

But unlike on iOS, it will be the speakers themselves doing the room analysis and sound optimisation, using their built-in microphones.

Internally, Sonos refers to this as “quick tuning”, with the regular walk-around-the-room-with-your-phone still available as “advanced tuning” – and still exclusive to iPhone and iPad.