New Sonos One smart speaker with Alexa is a steal at $199

Sonos is the brand to get if you want high-quality sound from a coected speaker, but until recently this meant giving up on your favourite voice assistant.

Now Sonos has introduced the Sonos One, a Sonos speaker that supports both Alexa and Google Assitant, and that comes in at a very affordable (for a Sonos speaker) $199.

In addition to support for music, Sonos One will allow owners to enjoy all the other great things people love about Alexa – they can hear the weather, set timers, listen to news and traffic reports, and even hear the latest sports scores.

Google Assistant is only coming in 2018 to the Sonos One, making it the first and only smart speaker to support multiple major voice services.

You can use Sonos One as a standalone speaker, wirelessly pair two of them for stereo sound, or use them with PLAYBASE or PLAYBAR to create home theatre surround sound.

The speaker features:

• Designed from the ground up to deliver surprisingly rich sound from a speaker of its size.
• Driven by two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer.
• Includes a six-mic array and an adaptive noise suppression algorithm to focus on the right person and ensure the voice service understands everything clearly.
• Voice capture technology with echo cancelation allows the speaker to still hear you over the music. The volume also intelligently lowers, or “ducks,” when you speak to it so you don’t have to shout over the music.
• The light on the speaker will be illuminated if the microphones are active. The light is hardwired to the same circuit that powers the microphone array, so if the light is off, it means the microphone is off.
• Owners can use Trueplay to easily tune Sonos One to sound great no matter where it’s placed in the home.
• Sonos One is available in all-white and all-black matte finishes.

Unfortunately, Sonos buyers outside US, UK, and Germany will only enjoy the basic services of the Sonos speaker, including multi-room listening, and access to multiple music services, but will be upgraded when Alexa and Google Assitant rolls out more locally.

See Sonos’s demo of the product below:

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The Sonos One can be pre-ordered from Sonos’s website here.