Sonos may have taken over a year to make good on its promise to support Google Assistant – but all good things take time. As of next week, a software upgrade means that the excellent Sonos One smart speaker and What Hi-Fi? Awards 2018 product of the year, Sonos Beam soundbar, will feature both Alexa and Google Assistant, giving customers the unique choice over which voice assistant they prefer speaking with in one speaker.
The update is available now in the US, and will be rolled-out to the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, and The Netherlands in July.
"We've been working on this for quite a while", say Sonos, "[but] this feature will truly elevate the customer experience and marks the first time that consumers will be able to buy a single smart speaker and get to choose which voice assistant they want to use. We think giving consumers choice is always the right decision, and we anticipate this philosophy will be adopted in the industry over time."
On the subject of choice, then, why might we choose Google Assistant over Alexa? Perhaps you own an Android TV, in which case having a Google Assistant speaker can make for neater interoperability. Maybe it's just that you're already in the Google ecosystem and prefer to deal with Google Assistant.
Or maybe you just like asking Google pertinent questions but want to keep Alexa on hand for buying stuff. Deep down, do you secretly find Google smarter but Alexa friendlier? Not sure? You'll soon be able to have lots of fun finding out.
There's no date yet on when the UK will get the Google Assistant update, but we'll be sure to download it and report back when it does.
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