Sonos One Review

All-new Sonos One – Voice Controlled Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa Built In (Black)

Finally it happened. The day Sonos fans have been waiting for them, you can now use Alexa to control your Sonos speakers. Well, mainly. The new Sonos One ($ 199) sounds just as fantastic as its other products, and thanks to the built-in speech assistant Amazon speakers, you can ask it to do a lot of things, from the pizza control to the softer lights. But Alexa's integration into the best speakers still has a few minor limitations. At the top there are touch controls for playing and pausing tracks, changing the volume and muting the sound and activating the microphone sound. I only wish that the volume up key is a plus sign and the volume is lower. Both are four points. A small LED next to the microphone button lights up when you say "Alexa"; Unlike Echo and Echo Dot, which have blue lights, it's hard to see the light from Sonos One on the other side of the room. However, there is an audio track when Alexa listened to you. At 6.4 x 4.7 x 4.7 inches, the Sonos One is the size of a large box of coffee. Its weight of 4.1 pounds makes it sensitive to its size. There is a power cord connector on the back of the speaker and an Ethernet port directly above it. Apart from that Sonos has no tickets. So if you did not connect them to Sonos Connect ($ 349), you will not be able to use them to stream audio from your TV.

Audio quality: Excellent

In keeping with its legacy, the Sonos One speakers sound amazing for their size. Only one of them could fill my room with a complete and balanced sound; To compare a second speaker with the first is even richer. One of the great things about Sonos speakers is that you can adapt them to the acoustics of the room you are in. For example, I heard Belle and Sebastian's "Je suis une cuckoo" before listening to the handsfree; the song went well, but the voices were very bright and the bass was hidden. After the voices of the speakers, the bass was much more pronounced and the voices were not so bright, but warmer. From ABBA to Frank Zappa, everything I threw into the Sonos speakers came dramatically considering its size. My room was filled with a rich and complete sound. I tried to turn on the speakers at 11, but I could only handle an 8 before they were loud. The bass line in "Summer Madness" by Kool & the Gang appeared, while the upper notes of the melody were heard at the top without distortion. The vocals in the chorus of The Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child" sounded a bit compressed, but there was a big separation between the bass line, the brass section and the strings. The same thing happened with AC / DC's "Highway to Hell": The chorus seemed to be compressed compared to the rest of the song, but the bass line really hit. The stereo configuration of both speakers was great for exposing rival guitar solos in Iron Maidens Aces High. The Sonos speakers were also good for gentler dishes: Dave Brubeck's "Rondo à la turc" sounded as warm as my vinyl album, as did other jazz songs by Vince Guaraldi and others. While Alexa allows you to stream music from a variety of sources, including Pandora, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM and TuneIn and Amazon's own music services, one of Sonos strengths is that it opens the world to other sources, including Apple Music, Google Play Music , MLB Gameday Audio and Napster. The caveat is that even if you can use Alexa to scroll back and forth in songs, you'll need to use the Sonos app to start playing. Update (11/21): The Sonos One has been updated, you can now control the Spotify playback via the loudspeaker with Alexa

The Integration: Near Seamless

The connection between Alexa and Sonos One was a bit more complicated than I would have liked After setting up the speakers with the Sonos app (with the permission of Alexa), I had to call the Alexa app for the Amazon Assistant to find and add them to my Smart Network. At first I had a little problem after pairing the speakers; Alexa did not recognize her properly and did not play music, and Alexa did not know that I had played music with the Sonos app. However, a quick call with technical support solved the problem. From then on, you can play music with voice commands or through the Sonos or Alexa apps. I also liked that when I used it The Sonos app for playing music, I could ask Alexa what is being played and go back and forth on the tracks

The six microphones of the Sonos One speakers were almost as sensitive as other Amazon Echo devices. Without touching anything, I could speak softly at about 10-15 feet and hear my voice accurately. But when I started the music, I had to scream to make myself heard. When Alexa wakes up, there is a small beep, the volume of the music goes off, and there is a second pause when the command is recognized and executed.

Brief

Even without Alexa, the Sonos speakers would be perfect for sending music to every corner of your home. Not only do they sound fantastic, but you can also customize your audio profiles in any room they are in and broadcast music from dozens of sources, including Spotify. Controlling all this with Amazon's language assistant is just one big advantage. I only wish I could use the speakers more easily than the center of my entertainment system; I think I'll have to wait until Sonos updates its playbar for it.

Where to Buy

Amazon

All-new Sonos One – Voice Controlled Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa Built In (Black)