Sonos is getting into the voice-activated home assistant market with a new smart speaker announced overnight. The Sonos One looks like the Play:1 speaker, but has some serious upgrades. Sonos One will launch with Amazon Alexa support and add Google Assistant in 2018.
The Sonos One will be available globally Oct. 24 and will cost A$299 with pre-orders start today at www.sonos.com. If you haven’t yet bought an Amazon Echo or Google Home, then this is both devices in one, with a great quality speaker and the benefit of SONOS connected services, seriously that’s the best feature set of any smart home speaker to-date.
Thanks to a microphone array, you can use your voice (from across the room) to control your audio experiences. This is a fantastic way to start playing music, podcasts, audiobooks and more from more than 80 streaming services. This removes the need to pull out your phone and fire up the SONOS controller, instead being able to command your SONOS system at will.
Sonos aren’t done with adding services, with Apple Airplay 2 support also coming to Sonos in 2018. The Sonos App is also getting a refresh today.
Senior VP Amazon Alexa, Tom Taylor said,
“We’re excited to work with Sonos to bring the power of Alexa and far-field voice control to help customers find and enjoy incredible sounding music. With the Sonos One, customers will be able to ask Alexa to help them with many things including playing their favorite albums, controlling smart home devices, getting the news, calling a ride, ordering dinner, and more, using just their voice. We can’t wait for customers to try this out!”
Another big piece of news from SONOS is that they’re opening up the developer program for new experiences on the Sonos Sound platform next year. If you’re a SONOS owner, this means more functionality for your investment as new apps and services come to the platform. If you’re a developer, this means a new platform you can write to and help users connect to services in their homes.
If you live in US, UK and Germany (sadly not Australians), the SONOS app will pickup Amazon Alexa functionality through a free software update to existing speakers.
