SONOS SOUNDS SMARTER WITH ALEXA ON BOARD
The $199 Sonos One, due out Tuesday, raises the bar for good-sounding smart speakers
Sonos is upping the volume in the smart speaker race.
Already well-known for its great-sounding wireless home speakers, Sonos is bringing to market the first whole home speaker system with built-in voice control using Amazon’s digital voice-commanded assistant Alexa.
The new speaker, the $199 Sonos One, due out Tuesday, raises the bar for good-sounding smart speakers. But it has competition on the way from Apple and Google, both set to launch their own increasingly sophisticated speakers in December. Apple will have the $349 HomePod Siri-driven speaker, and Google comes in with the $399 Home Max speaker.
Sonos has staked out some potentially profitable territory at its price point. It comes in below those future competitors, but a bit more than the new Amazon Echo speaker, out Oct. 31 for $99.99. Amazon has given a nod to better-sounding music in that new model, touting its Dolby process for improved music playback.
At home over the past several months, I’ve enjoyed the Amazon Echo that we’ve placed on the counter bisecting our kitchen and dining room. Echo’s smarts, helped along by artificial intelligence, quickly won over my wife, who might have nixed a traditional “dumb” speaker as simply clutter.
Sonos One is like an Echo on steroids. For starters, Sonos One is as smart as an Echo. Sonos worked with Amazon on incorporating the AI assistant into the speaker, and its six microphones constantly listen for your queries of Alexa.
Once you’ve finished setup, you simply talk to Alexa through the Sonos One: “Alexa, shuffle songs by Tom Petty,” or “Alexa, play the new song by Beck.”
When it comes to music, the Sonos One hits a high note, outperforming the Echo. Added depth comes in the tumbling drums and guitar work at the start of Bob Dylan’s Everything is
Broken. And it delivers a richer rendition of the horn-infused and percussion-driven rally at the heart of Steely Dan’s Aja. There’s also more oomph in the bass beats of Wild Thoughts, DJ Khaled’s track featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller.
Beyond just better sound, the Sonos One will control music throughout your home, wherever you have Sonos speakers deployed. So I could ask the new Sonos One, which sat on a sideboard in the dining room, to play my Steve Winwood playlist on Amazon Music Unlimited in the living room. And you can do this throughout the home in other rooms.
And, of course, you can ask the Sonos One those everyday questions, such as “What’s the weather forecast?” and “What was Babe Ruth’s career batting average?”
Note: If you already have an Amazon Echo or Dot speaker and Sonos speakers, you can update the Sonos app and wirelessly connect an Alexa-enabled device to direct music to any of your current Sonos speakers (of course, your older Sonos speakers won’t talk to you).
Like other Sonos speakers, the newcomer can be used as a solo three-dimensional speaker or paired for stereo sound or used with other Sonos products such as the larger Play:5 speaker ($499), Playbar TV soundbar speaker ($699), and Sub subwoofer speaker ($699).
To get your speakers and Alexa on the same page, you upgrade the Sonos app on your smartphone or tablet. The app walks you through connecting your speakers to your home wireless network.
You’ll also download the Alexa app, if you haven’t already, and enable the Sonos skill within the app. You will also want to add other music apps within Alexa including Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn.
Looking forward, the Sonos One is going to get smarter. By year’s end, Sonos plans to let Alexa have full voice control of Spotify.
As of now, you cannot ask Alexa to play specific Spotify tracks or playlists, but you can pick Spotify tracks, albums or playlists in the Sonos app and then ask Alexa to pause, skip or adjust the volume using your voice. And you can similarly operate more than 80 other music services, including Google Play and Soundcloud, using the Sonos app.
Next year, Sonos also plans to update its software to allow the new speakers to work with Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri using AirPlay 2, too.
So if you aren’t sure which AI assistant you’ll ultimately make nice with, the Sonos One is a sound purchase that sounds good now and in the future.
The Sonos One is going to get even smarter. By year’s end, Sonos plans to let Alexa have full voice control of Spotify.