Not solely does the Edifier ES300 sport deliciously retro-styled beauty, nevertheless it additionally presents nice connectivity. You’ll be able to play tunes through Bluetooth, hook up exterior sources through USB or a 3.5mm jack, and even stream hi-res audio at as much as 24bit/96kHz. And with discreet lighting and a built-in battery, it is an ideal companion for night entertaining, even within the backyard.
Execs
- Attractive, retro-styled design
- Able to 24bit/96kHz hi-res audio
- Extra reasonably priced worth
Cons
- Much less convincing sound, particularly within the bass frequencies
- Shorter (though respectable) battery life
- Lacking some sensible options
The Sonos Transfer 2 could also be expensive, nevertheless it makes up for that when it comes to superior audio and razor-sharp options. It is able to punchy, dynamic sound with hefty bass, whereas retaining enough poise for lighter mixes. In the meantime, wonderful options like Automated Trueplay room compensation and an epic battery life give it compelling utility.
Execs
- Fulsome and detailed sound with loud volumes
- Nice battery life in real-world use
- Premium-feeling construct high quality
Cons
- A bodily deal with could be preferable
- Excessive worth for the audio high quality
- Stereo sound is not very efficient
The Edifier ES300 is an interesting retro-themed wi-fi speaker that undoubtedly made a sizeable impression on me after I first obtained it. There’s one thing undeniably charming about its premium, old-school radio vibes, with its monochrome shade palette and gold accents, and built-in lighting. Whereas many audio merchandise swing for this sort of aesthetic, far fewer efficiently hit their goal bang on.
Nonetheless, there’s one thing else that struck me about it, one thing that gave me a little bit little bit of gadget deja vu. The Edifier is a cumbersome Wi-Fi speaker – usually one thing you’d set and neglect in an acoustic candy spot in your lounge, kitchen or bed room – however, unusually, it additionally has a battery for listening on the go. This instantly jogged my memory of one other entry within the annals of the best wireless speakers: the Sonos Transfer 2.
The original Move was considered a bit of an oddity on its release. It was a chonky boi, more at home on a shelf or counter than slung in a backpack and taken camping, and could be used as part of a multi-room speaker system. Yet, it had a built-in battery and IP56 ingress protection, meaning it could easily cope with the great outdoors if you had the means to transport it.
But the Move definitely identified an ecological niche for itself and the Move 2 that followed it, a seriously smart speaker offering high-end audio and modern connectivity that could easily do double duty spinning tunes at a picnic or a pool party. And that’s a niche that Edifier has seized on with the ES300. So which of these portable Wi-Fi speakers thrives best in this space?
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: price and availability
The Edifier ES300 was first released on June 20, 2025, while the Sonos Move 2 was released back on September 20, 2023. The ES300 has a list price of $349.99 / £299.99 / AU$399, and the Sonos Move 2 has a list price of $449 / £449 / $799. However, deals exist on both: for example, at the time of writing, you can find the ES300 on Amazon UK for £247.76, whereas the Sonos Transfer 2 is out there from $432.49 at Amazon US.
There are a number of variations of every speaker out there. The Edifier ES300 is out there in white and gold or black and gold colorways. In the meantime, the Sonos Transfer 2 is available in three hues: black, white and ‘olive’ (which, on the danger of sounding pretentious, I’d describe extra as artichoke).
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: specs
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Edifier ES300 |
Sonos Move 2 |
|---|---|---|
|
Weight |
8.2 lbs / 3.7kg |
6.61 lbs / 3kg |
|
Dimensions |
10.9 x 6.5 x 6.5 inches / 277 x 165 x 165 mm |
6.3 x 9.5 x 5 inches / 160 x 241 x 127mm |
|
Battery life (quoted) |
12 hours |
24 hours |
|
Connectivity |
Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi, USB, 3.5mm jack |
Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, USB-C |
|
Drivers |
4-inch (116mm) mid-bass, 2x 1.25-inch (33mm) tweeter |
2x angled tweeters, 1x midwoofer |
|
Aux-in |
Yes |
Yes (via USB-C adapter) |
|
Charger port |
AC power cable |
Sonos charging base or USB-C |
|
Microphone |
No |
Yes |
|
Waterproof rating |
None |
IP56 |
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: features
Wireless speakers tend to sit at the bleeding edge when it comes to features, often rocking more innovative functionality than their wired or Bluetooth contemporaries. Neither the Edifier ES300 nor the Sonos Move 2 is an exception to this, although I found that one was appreciably smarter than the other.
The ES300 features you’ll probably use most are its sound profiles and EQ settings. Edifier provides four preset profiles: Classic, Monitor, Game and Vocal. Some of these felt like odd choices to me. Neither Monitor nor Game really fit the vast majority of users; I’d have thought that including a Bass mode instead would’ve been a no-brainer. Fortunately, it has a six-band EQ that lets you tailor the sound a bit more to your liking, although many cheaper speakers offer a more granular nine-band EQ, such as the Tribit StormBox 2.
At first, the Sonos Transfer 2 could appear much more restricted than this, its fundamental adjustable EQ settings within the app solely permitting you to regulate bass, treble and loudness. However its smartest characteristic is that, for essentially the most half, you shouldn’t ever have to get your arms soiled massaging frequency bands to get higher sound. That’s as a result of its Automated Trueplay algorithm usually assesses the speaker’s environment, calibrating its audio output for the form of the house it’s in. And it really works astoundingly nicely; I by no means actually felt the necessity to tinker with its output to rebalance the sound.
One characteristic that the ES300 has over the Transfer 2 is its built-in lighting modes. There are three patterns on supply: Static, Respiration and Water-flow (a somewhat grandiose time period for lights that simply cycle counter-clockwise). And you may as well choose between two colours: a cool white and a hotter yellow. Whereas I’d argue this isn’t a radical departure when it comes to options, I do discover the general impact pleasing, and I loved it sufficient that I saved it on even after I wasn’t listening to music.
Every system offers you a great number of choices for controlling it. The ES300 options some aesthetically pleasing touch-sensitive controls on its high floor, together with two dials for setting its quantity and the brightness of its built-in mild, normal playback controls, and supply choice. In the meantime, the Edifier app supplies additional choices, together with configuring the Wi-Fi community, switching sources, organising the stereo channel, EQ customization and light-weight impact settings.
The Transfer 2 options controls on its high floor to deal with play/pause, skip, replay, modify the quantity, and group or ungroup merchandise. Its app presents you the flexibility to regulate a number of options, together with community settings, its Automated Trueplay characteristic and toggling on loudness correction. You’ll additionally discover one setting right here that you just gained’t see within the Edifier app: voice management. The Sonos presents you the choice to regulate your speaker utilizing both Sonos Voice Management or Amazon Alexa, one thing sorely lacking from its rival.
With regards to connectivity, neither speaker precisely reinvents the wheel, however they each include a great vary of choices. As you’d count on from a wi-fi speaker, they each supply Wi-Fi, whereas the ES300 supplies Bluetooth 5.4 and the Transfer 2 has Bluetooth 5.3. Each gadgets will let you play immediately from streaming apps like Spotify and Tidal, or you possibly can push out audio direct out of your gadgets through AirPlay 2. By way of bodily ports, the Edifier has a USB port and three.5mm enter, whereas the Sonos rocks a USB-C port.
There’s a slight distinction within the audio decision every system can muster. Whereas the Sonos Transfer 2 is able to lossless, CD-quality sound, the Edifier ES300 can stretch to 24-bit/96kHz hi-res sound from appropriate sources. Naturally, this implies you’ll have to both stream from an LDAC-compatible system, stream ALAC over AirPlay 2, hook up a service able to hi-res audio like Tidal or plug immediately into its 3.5mm jack.
As I remarked after I began this piece, maybe essentially the most notable characteristic of both of those Wi-Fi audio system is their built-in battery, one thing that’s nonetheless vanishingly uncommon out there.
Each models have respectable longevity. I performed music constantly on the ES300 over AirPlay 2 at 50% quantity with the sunshine off for six hours – throughout that point, its battery solely dropped all the way down to 60%, which means it may probably final 15 hours complete, considerably greater than the 12 hours Edifier predicted. However the Transfer 2 nonetheless blew previous this, lasting over 24 hours, which means it can nonetheless be swinging lengthy after its opponent is out for the depend.
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: sound quality
Given its pricing and styling, it’s safe to say that I had certain expectations of the Edifier ES300 going into my testing. And yet my initial impression of its sound was honestly pretty lukewarm. It’s okay, but I feel like as you enter the mid-range of the Wi-Fi speaker market, you’re entitled to expect better than just okay. In comparison, the Sonos Move 2 is more expensive but sounds every bit the kind of speaker I’d expect for its price.
Admittedly, when I played Otomo by Bonobo on the Edifier, the woody-sounding percussion was really tightly expressed, while the tribal, choral vocals rose above everything clearly. But it’s when that bassline drops that the specifics of the ES300’s sound profile are laid bare. There’s enough upper bass that you can hear the bass swell – it’s not entirely AWOL, fortunately – but if you’re hoping for anything more tangible than this, you’re going to be left wanting.
Conversely, the Sonos Move 2 brings much more low-end guts to the same drop, giving the track a far more stable foundation. On occasion, it actually could sound a little overblown, with the sub sounding overly resonant and swamping the lower end of the mix. However, I soon discovered that this was an artifact of the speaker’s loudness correction – things sound a lot clearer with it off, although this does come at the cost of some bass presence at lower volumes.
I was a little more impressed with how the ES300 handles vocal-heavy mixes. Sticking on How Does It Feel by London Grammar, I was pleasantly surprised by the rich timbre of the vocals and how they rose above the rest of the mix. But when trying the same tune out on the Move 2, I could see how much I was missing out on – Hannah Reid’s honeyed vocals somehow felt even more rounded and held more gravitas, while the warmth to the track’s low-end and pump to its kick added some much-needed glue that held the mix together.
A personal pet peeve of mine is when speaker manufacturers pump up the treble to compensate for a lack of dynamism in the lower frequencies. The Edifier, fortunately, doesn’t fall into this trap. Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way is a great track for exposing an overly bright and glassy mix, and yet the ES300 manages to avoid those jangling guitars sounding too sharp. It does pull its punches a little too much compared to the Move 2, though, which gave the transients of the drums much crisper edges and enabled them to puncture through the mix without ever sounding over-exposed.
The Edifier ES300 can occasionally rally, though: at louder volumes, some of those truant frequencies start to labor a little harder. While I was listening to Reflection by Ben Böhmer & Wood, its swelling sub actually put in a proper shift, helping to support its thumping kick. The result wasn’t what I would call balanced, though – naturally, the mids are boosted too, so can be pretty intense – and the Move 2 shows it’s possible to still obtain impressive performance without needing to crank things up to 11.
Perhaps the only area where I felt the ES300 took a palpable lead over the Move 2 is in instrument separation. Listening to Claire de Lune by Kamasi Washington, it gave each element room to play, with the layered brass playfully dancing around the bass and piano.
Conversely, while Sonos’s speaker offered fuller, more cohesive sound, this occasionally felt like it came at the expense of more discrete expression of different instruments. This could well be the work of Move 2’s Automatic Trueplay algorithm, though, with it slightly compressing the dynamic range to prevent subtler elements getting lost in the space.
All told, I found the Move 2 offers far more consistent, authentic sound compared to the Edifier ES300. It seems capable of a wider frequency range, outdoing its rival at both the high and low end, giving far more depth and context to a range of genres. Yes, the latter rallies a little at higher volumes, but I’d expect a speaker at this kind of price point to be more consistent at different loudness levels.
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: design
One area where the Edifier ES300 shines is in its design. In some ways, I feel that this is a speaker designed more to be seen than heard. Particularly in its white and gold colorway, it effortlessly nails that retro vibe so many speaker brands have aimed for and yet rarely hit.
Wrapping the ES300’s handcrafted wooden speaker case is a ‘leather-like’ coating in either cream or black. Despite being a crunchy veggie, I’m not always keen on this kind of leatherette finish – rather than feeling vintage, it often comes across as cheap and a bit tacky – but here it feels pleasingly tactile and premium. Woven from braided fabric, the speaker cover comes in either beige or black, while the plastic grille beneath is picked out in gold across both models. Cumulatively, this all helps the ES300 stand out in a market crowded with dull black boxes.
The Edifier’s built-in lighting is the cherry on top. Admittedly, the two hues and three lighting modes it offers aren’t exactly a scintillating aurora, but there’s no end of party speakers out there that can drench you in a cocktail of kaleidoscopic color, so in some ways the level of restraint shown here is a breath of fresh air. Wave a hand over the Edifier’s top surface and its buttons light up as well, albeit in a cold white tone – it surely wouldn’t have been hard to have this shift with the hue of its main light, but that’s a minor nitpick.
In comparison, the Sonos Move 2 defines itself more by its brains than its beauty. It’s an elliptical cylinder, with a gentle curve toward the base where it nestles into its cradle. This is also a nice touch, as rather than having to plug in a power cable to juice up its battery, you can simply plop it down in its little nest to recharge.
The bottom quarter and control panel on top of the Move 2 are made of matte plastic – this feels gorgeously smooth to the touch, with the olive/artichoke green coloration on the model I tested adding more visual interest than the plain black or white colorways. Meanwhile, the rest of the device is covered in a fine metal grille. Overall, it’s an attractive package, but it’s undeniably modern and gadgety compared to the more retro vibes the ES300 aims for.
For the most part, which device takes the lead for you is likely a matter of personal taste. However, one clear area in which Sonos unarguably leads is weatherproofing. While the Edifier has no protection against either splashes or dust ingress, the Move 2 offers IP56 protection, which should not only prevent grit and dust from interfering with its workings but can also withstand powerful water jets from any direction. So if you want a poolside companion, the Sonos is the undeniable champ.
Given that both speakers are designed to be semi-portable, their comparative bulk will be an important consideration. With the ES300 weighing in at 8.2 lbs (3.7kg) and the Move 2 at 6.61 lbs (3kg), neither of them is what I’d consider light, but they’re both movable enough that you won’t struggle carting them from room to room or out to the garden. Ultimately, though, the Sonos takes the edge for me in terms of maneuverability – it has a useful carry handle built into its back, which the Edifier lacks, making the former more convenient for moving as you drift from room to room.
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: value
There’s a pretty major caveat to everything I’ve said so far: price. While I’d argue the Edifier ES300 and Sonos Move 2 are both firmly mid-range speakers, there’s still a noticeable difference in their cost. The ES300 has a list price of $349.99 / £299.99 / AU$399, and the Sonos Move 2 has a list price of $449 / £449 / $799, meaning the latter costs a fair slice more. And this gap is only widened once you factor in sales prices on the ES300, which, at the time of writing, was discounted down to £247.76 at Amazon UK.
However, price doesn’t necessarily translate directly to value. And when you look at all of the extras you get with the Sonos Move 2, that price suddenly seems a lot more justified. Not only is the Move 2 crammed with smart features like Automatic Trueplay and voice-assistant support, it also offers superior sound with better-sculpted bass. While I do marginally give the Edifier ES300 the edge when it comes to looks, the Sonos is a bit more portable, and its IP56 rating makes it much more usable outdoors.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for a wireless speaker with a built-in battery, you’re going to get a lot more mileage out of the Sonos Move 2. That extra $99.01 / £201.24 / AU$400 isn’t small change, but I do feel it’s worth saving for a little longer and making the investment in smarter features and more expressive, well-rounded sound.
Edifier ES300 vs Sonos Move 2: verdict
Maybe I should have sprinkled some spoiler warnings throughout this versus piece, because I’ve probably already given away the ending. Despite an attractive design, the odd novel feature, and its capacity for hi-res audio, the Edifier ES300 just can’t quite KO the champ of portable Wi-Fi speakers.
Fundamentally, the Sonos Move 2 is smarter, with both its automatic audio-tuning and voice control running intellectual rings around the Edifier. Additionally, its sound covers a broader range of frequencies, offering crisper treble and whomping bass – it has a confidence that its rival can’t quite muster. Add in that IP56 ingress protection and lengthy 24-hour battery life, and you’ve got a set of specs that few mid-range wireless speakers can challenge.
Unless you’re head-over-heels in love with the ES300’s looks or you simply don’t have the extra dough to stump up for Sonos’s pricier speaker, the Move 2 is the one you’re gonna want to put your money on here.
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