When Sonos released the Play:5 speaker in late 2015, the Echo was still an unproven tech curiosity. But since then, Alexa and the Echo have grown rapidly in both popularity and functionality, inspiring competition from the likes of Google and Apple. Talking to a speaker is totally normal now -- but Sonos users haven't been able to do that. They've instead had to choose between the convenience of products like the Echo and Google Home and the superior audio quality that Sonos speakers offer.
Sonos has known for some time that this is a problem. In early 2016, then-CEO John MacFarlane cited the Echo as primary competition and promised that voice recognition would be a key technology for the company moving forward. Now we're finally seeing the fruits of that effort. The Sonos One takes everything that worked in the company's entry-level Play:1 speaker and adds in support for 's Alexa, which means you can finally talk to a Sonos speaker and have it play music for you. But with Google, and Apple all working on music-focused speakers of their own, Sonos could get buried if the One doesn't do everything right.
When Sonos released the Play:5 speaker in late 2015, the Echo was still an unproven tech curiosity. But since then, Alexa and the Echo have grown
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