At an event today in New York City, Sonos announced the Sonos One smart speaker. It’s the first Sonos speaker to feature built-in hardware voice control.
The company positioned the Sonos One as the smart speaker for music lovers. Users can pair two Sonos One speakers to make them work as a pair of stereo speakers. The speaker uses echo cancellation technology, as well as six far field microphones, to isolate human voices. Like past Sonos speakers, Sonos One includes the company’s ‘true play’ technology to allow Sonos users to tune their Sonos One to the specific room they place it in.
At launch, Sonos One is only compatible with Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant. However, the company says it envisions the speaker working with other smart assistants in the future. In fact, starting next year, Sonos One will be compatible with Google Assistant. As with all of the company’s current speakers, Sonos One is compatible with more than 80 music streaming services, including Spotify.
The company was quick to point out that users that don’t want to use the speakers voice control functionality will be able to turn the feature off.
In Canada, Sonos One will cost $249.99 CAD. The speaker is set to be available in white and black, and can be pre-ordered starting today with delivery scheduled to start on October 24th.
In addition, Sonos announced that its others speakers are now compatible with Amazon’s Alexa personal helper. Alexa is available to current Sonos speaker owners starting today in a publicly available beta. Using Alexa, Sonos owners will be able to control the company’s speakers with their voice.
The beta is only available to Sonos owners in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. Sonos, however, promised that Alexa functionality will be available in additional countries as Amazon expands Alexa’s availability.
In 2018, Sonos speakers will also support Apple’s AirPlay 2 multi-room audio streaming functionality.
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