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New in our buyer's guide: Apple, Google and a little Sonos
Separate from our holiday gift guide, it was time for us to update our year-round shortlist of recommendations. Since our last round of additions, three months ago, we've reviewed a boatload of flagship handsets, with the iPhone 8/8 Plus and Pixel 2/Pixel 2 XL all making the list. (It's not that we don't recommend the iPhone X, but we recommend the 8 and particularly the 8 Plus for more people.) While we were at it, we also decided that the Sonos One, Google Home Mini, Apple TV 4K, second-gen Daydream View VR headset and the GoPro Hero6 were also worthy of this list. Find all that and more in the Engadget buyer's guide.
The best audio gear to give as gifts
Maybe there's an audiophile on your list, or maybe you're shopping for someone who recently acquired a new phone and could use something better than the pack-in headphones. Either way, we have a slew of recommendations in the audio gear section of our holiday gift guide. On our list you'll find smart speakers from Google and Amazon alike, along with Sonos, whose new "One" speaker includes Alexa built in, with Google Assistant support coming soon. When it comes to headphones, our selections run the gamut from the affordable (Jabra's Move headset) to the high end (Bragi's Dash Pro wireless earbuds and these noise cancelling headphones from Sony), with a couple mid-range options in between. Rounding out the list, we have a soundbar, drum machine, synth app, the Amazon Echo Show and one of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers. Find all that and many more items in our holiday gift guide, at the link below.
Sonos One now supports voice control of Spotify with Alexa
The Sonos One is the company's first voice-activated speaker, letting users control their music via Amazon's Alexa assistant. When we reviewed it back in October, editor Nathan Ingraham called it the best-sounding smart speaker you can buy. But when it launched, the Sonos One's voice control features didn't work with Spotify, though Sonos promised it this integration would arrive by December 21. It turns out it's here early; Alexa can now use Spotify to to play your favorite album, artist, playlist or song on the Sonos One.
Pandora's app now offers direct control for Sonos speakers
If you use both Pandora and Sonos, there's a pretty useful update coming your way today. Pandora's apps for iOS and Android now let users directly control music streaming to your Sonos speakers. The Sonos controller app is still required to set up Pandora, but once that's done, users can select songs, playlists and stations directly through the Pandora app to play on their speakers.
Sonos promises Alexa-powered Spotify controls by December 21st
Sonos made a big hubbub about its first voice-controlled speaker a few weeks ago, which makes the Sonos One not having Alexa support for Spotify out of the box all the more suspect. That will change by December 21st as the speaker company says it will push an update enabling "full voice support" for Amazon's digital assistant before the self-imposed deadline. Meaning, it could be around seven weeks longer before your free Echo Dot will take advantage of everything a Sonos speaker can offer. It isn't clear if this is the timeline for Alexa control on older Sonos speakers. At the moment, you can only start music with either the Sonos or Spotify apps. Oh well; this is the future we live in. The update should be out in time for your winter solstice playlist, at least.
Sonos One review: The best-sounding smart speaker you can buy
When Sonos released the Play:5 speaker in late 2015, the Amazon 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 Amazon's Alexa, which means you can finally talk to a Sonos speaker and have it play music for you. But with Google, Amazon and Apple all working on music-focused speakers of their own, Sonos could get buried if the One doesn't do everything right.
Sonos One hands-on: Betting on voice control to evolve
After months filled with teases, rumors and speculation, Sonos has finally introduced its first speaker with built-in support for voice commands. Today, at an event in New York City, the company unveiled the Sonos One, a device billed as "The Smart Speaker for Music Lovers." As expected, the main attraction here are the voice features, which at launch will be powered by Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant. We say "at launch" because Sonos CEO, Patrick Spence, ended the presentation with the news that the One will also work with Google Assistant in 2018.
Sonos One is the company's first speaker with built-in voice control
Sonos wasn't shy about promising a voice-controlled speaker at its October 4th event, and it's delivering. The Sonos One will support Alexa out of the box, but Sonos says it's open to using other voice assistants -- in fact, Google Assistant will be coming in 2018. The company says this is the first smart speaker for music lovers. It looks like a Play:1 on the outside (not a bad thing), but it has a six-microphone array to pick up your spoken commands and lighting to indicate when voice control is active.
