Sonos One (Gen 2) - Voice Controlled Smart Speaker With Amazon Alexa Built-In - Black

I have a dozen of these speakers throughout my home and garage. From portable to stationary. The ease of use, charging ability/battery life for the outdoor use portable speakers adds to the great design. Plus the sound quality is excellent

I'm a big fan of the Amazon Alexa system, and for a while now I've had several recent generation Echo speakers scattered throughout my house. However, although the Echo has decent sound quality, I wanted to upgrade and take things to the next level. I did a lot of research and ended up buying several of these Sonos One (gen 2) speakers. They're pricey but it was worth it.The sound quality is a *noticeable* improvement from the Echo speakers. Much smoother and crisper music, better range, etc. It's just a higher end speaker.I did have some initial frustrations authorizing my first Sonos speaker to work with Alexa. Amazon kept wanting me to authenticate my new device with a One Time Password (OTP) it was sending to my e-mail, but that I wasn't finding those e-mails in my inbox. I'm still not sure what was happening (they weren't going to my spam folder either, that I could tell), but I finally found those authenticator messages hiding somehow in the "All Mail" gmail folder on my iphone. It was weird and frustrating, but once I got past that, everything has been smooth sailing.Some of the negative comments from older reviews really don't seem to apply anymore. You can easily group speakers into sets when you want to play music in multiple rooms at once. The Sonos app integrates with Amazon Music, Spotify, Sirius XM, etc. It's also not true that you have to plug at least one speaker directly into your router or Ethernet anymore. The entire set can be fully wireless.Other Pro's: Other than much higher sound quality, the Sonos are much better at knowing which speaker to activate when you want to chat with Alexa. With my old Echo speakers, if I said "Alexa," I would often get a speaker answering me from two rooms down the hall for some reason. I ended up using four different wake words to try to prevent that from happening (which was annoying). Now, even though I have a Sonos device in my kitchen and one only ten feet away in my living room, it's 100% accurate in always activating the closest device, and not trying to respond to my voice commands from a speaker on the other side of the house. I was also having problems with the Echo speakers (five of them grouped together throughout the house) where they would often have one or two speakers drop out of the group when I played music for more than a few minutes. I also was getting music that would crackle or hiss on the Echo speakers between songs, or would suddenly stop playing (and that was all streaming from the Amazon app, which you think would have had the least amount of those kind of issues with their own company's devices). None of that happens anymore with my Sonos.Cons: The Sonos aren't bluetooth compatible, if that's important to you. Also, they're at least twice the size and weight of an Echo speaker, which could be a consideration depending on where you intend to put them. And finally, as I'd mentioned earlier, they're not cheap. But there's a reason you end up paying more than twice what an Echo speaker costs -- you're definitely buying a much higher quality sound.

I believe it is necessary to mention that I am a gamer. I play games A LOT and I tend to listen to music ALL the time. When I read online that this speaker is great for music they were NOT kidding. The sound and the bass on it is so perfect it's better than a lot of speakers that I have heard and owned. The volume on my speaker is not even in the middle of the volume bar and it is already loud enough (To where I actually feel like my neighbors can hear it next door), but my bass was too good to where I had to turn down -5 (Bass is still loud enough to notice in the music) [Bass goes to max +10 and to -10 as well as the other (2 fuctions). You can mess with Bass, Treble, and Balance in app. I have (2) of these Sonos synched to each other and the sound quality of it is so perfect that my buddies online ask me to play music for them while we play zombies (since it goes through the Mic flawlessly and the sound quality is that crisp). They have said that it sounds like they are listening to it in person. Now I am picky when it comes to speakers and I can't say anything negative about the sound quality and bass. Now I will let you all know a few things that you may have been wondering. The setup was SUPER EASY. When I finished it I literally said out loud, "Was that it?" The steps: 1) Download app. 2)Make account and verify. 3)Connect to speaker. 4)Connect speaker to Internet. 5) Download update. *Done. That was all. App is SUPER EASY to use it's very simple which makes it a great app. Now like I have mentioned I listen to music A LOT, so I added Pandora, Amazon Music, etc and even getting those on it were easy. They guide you to it when you go into the settings of the app and it asks you if you want to add them. This next subject may be negative for you depending on your area and perspective. You have to add your own voice control system to it if your area has one. I have been using Alexa since I started owning one roughly about 4yrs ago, so I use the Alexa voice, but there are ways to get other voices. For me getting the Alexa voice was super easy. You can add it in the settings as well and it's under *Voice* in bold print. Now another possible negative thing depending on your standpoint and what your trying to use it for. It doesn't have as many functions as Alexa. Which is fine for me since I have the current newest Alexa coming in on Friday. I will be using the Alexa as the control tower for it since it has the most functions. You can apparently connect your Alexa to these speakers by using the Alexa app. I will let you know if it is true once I receive my Alexa come this Friday the 8th. If you have any questions ask away. I'll respond the best I can.

These speakers are the bomb! I had one in my bathroom and just bought two more for the kitchen and living room. They sync up easily and perfectly. The ability to control your music from your phone/iPad is extremely easy as well. You can select from your playlist, SiriusXM, Pandora, etc. You can choose music right from the app or from the actual subscription app too.The speaker itself is very well built and looks slick. It does not take up a lot of space but the sound is impactful. One of these speakers can fill up a very large room with good sounding tunes. I would compare it to a nice Bose speaker. The price is a little more then some of the cheaper Bluetooth speakers but that is because you are paying for years of technology and speaker sound. Sonos has been around for a long time and this product proves it.The addition of Alexa to this speaker is just a nice bonus. It works as well as the speaker you get from Amazon but the sound is way better. I doesn’t have all the things that the speaker you get from Amazon, like drop in or calling, but I don’t use that very much. It would be nice to add that feature if possible as a update.All in all, the price is expensive but well worth it for the sound and ease of use. You can easily get one to start and once you see the power easily add additional speakers.