Sonos is jumping on the smart speaker bandwagon. However, instead of developing its own smart assistant from scratch, the company has developed a smart speaker that is capable of running existing smart assistants. The Sonos One speaker has been officially launched today. It will launch with support for Amazon Alexa on October 24th. Support for Google Assistant will arrive later.
Sonos One is a voice-controller smart speaker that supports multiple voice assistants. Since it’s a Sonos product, music takes center stage. It can play music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other content from over 80 streaming services.
The Sonos One will work seamlessly with other Sonos speakers. It can be used as a standalone speaker, two can be paired wirelessly for stereo sound, and they can also be used with Sonos Playbase or Playbar products to create home theater surround sound.
The speaker itself has been designed from the ground up with two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer. It also includes a six-mic array and adaptive noise suppression for accurate voice recognition.
Amazon Alexa will be able to control Sonos One out of the box. It will have full voice support for Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and other services. Alexa voice control for Spotify will arrive later.
Aside from music control, Sonos One owners will be able to have access to Alexa’s other skills which include news updates, traffic reports, running web searches, providing sports scores, and more. Support for Google Assistant will arrive on the Sonos One next year.
Sonos One will be available globally on October 24th for $199. Pre-orders begin today at the company’s website.