Sonos One: The Best Sounding Smart Speaker
The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free.
The Sonos One is hands down the best sounding smart speaker available. I have been so excited for this speaker ever since I first heard it was coming out that I may have even stalked the UPS guy waiting for this shipment. Finally, a company known for making great speakers was going to make a speaker that even my 5 yr old daughter could activate with her voice using Alexa.
I was not prepared for just how amazing the sound quality is on the Sonos.
From the first second I turned on the gorgeous all-white speaker (it also comes in all-black) and it made a rich chime sound that resonated through the entire room, I knew the Sonos One was truly something special.
It simply sounds so much better than the other smart speakers currently on the market that even people that claim not care about sound, will notice.
It is very impressive and I am in love with the way it sounds.
Setup and tuning – yes, this speaker is so smart it even tunes itself to your specific room using Sonos Trueplay and the microphone on your cell phone.
Trust me, it really does make the music sound better. This is done through the very user-friendly Sonos app. Simply setup a Sonos account and follow the prompts to quickly begin streaming from your various music streaming accounts which even includes services such as Apple Music and Tidal (which really showcases the high fidelity sound capability of the Sonos One).
Once the initial setup was done, it was time to turn this into a “smart” speaker by connecting it with Alexa.
This is all done through Amazon’s Alexa app. This is where I quickly began to find out that the Sonos One is a smart speaker that can use Amazon’s Alexa voice services to activate Amazon Music, TuneIn Radio, Pandora, and iHeartRadio (Spotify is coming soon) but it in many ways quite different from an Amazon Echo speaker.
It can still check news, traffic and manage smart devices but what surprised me is that it does not appear to support Amazon Echo features such as multi-room playback (although it will connect wirelessly with other Sonos Home Sound System speakers), flash briefings, Echo Spatial Perception (which enables only the closest Alexa device to respond to your requests), or drop-ins at this point in time.
It’s an impressive smart speaker with tons of potential. Sonos even has plans for it to support Google Home and Apple’s Siri (including AirPlay 2) in 2018. No other smart speaker on the market has the capability of supporting multiple voice services.
I am in love with the sound of the Sonos One and I can’t wait to see what all it is capable of. If you want to use your voice to have Alexa control the best sounding smart speaker on the market, I recommend picking one up at Best Buy.
