Just a day after Sonos finally rolled out Google Assistant support for its smart speakers, both it and Amazon Alexa appear to be broken for some users. Sonos is aware of the issue, as it stated on its Twitter account, and is working on getting it restored.
For many users, being able to turn on music with their voice is not available on the Sonos One and Sonos Beam right now. Of course, this really only applies to those that have gotten the update that brings the Google Assistant to the speaker. Some Sonos speakers are not able to play music right now either. For example, for my Sonos One and Beam, I typically play music through the Spotify app on my desktop. But it can only “find” the Sonos Beam, even though both speakers are connected to the same WiFi network.
As far as the outages go, Amazon Alexa is completely out, for everyone, according to Sonos. While Google Assistant is only a partial outage right now. As mentioned, Sonos is aware of the problem and is working diligently to get it working again. Though, there’s no word on when that might happen. Hopefully it is sooner rather than later.
These issues come at a pretty bad time for Sonos. It just rolled out the much anticipated update that brings Google Assistant to its smart speakers. After waiting nearly two years for the Google Assistant to land, it’s now not really working. And could show that the Assistant wasn’t quite ready for primetime. This could also be due to everyone in the US that owns a Sonos smart speaker trying to download the update and install it on their speakers. As well as testing it out to see how well it works.
The Sonos One and Sonos Beam now both use Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and can work as an Amazon Echo or Google Home smart speaker. Which is pretty nice to have. Since no matter which platform you use, you can use it on your Sonos speaker. And not to mention, you’ll get better multi-room audio, thanks to Sonos’ speakers. Sonos already does multi-room audio, and does it very well. Basically by using your WiFi network to sync your speakers. Which is a clever way to do it, and surprisingly, no other company has done it as well as Sonos has so far.
With the Sonos ecosystem, you get multi-room audio, but you also get some pretty awesome sounding audio. It’ll be better than what the Google Home and Amazon Echo can provide – except for maybe the Google Home Max. Sonos offers some really deep bass, as well as some crystal clear mids and highs. Making it a much better option for a Google Home speaker.
Luckily these outages don’t happen often (I’ve owned a Sonos One for about two years, and have never had an outage with it). So if you were looking to get your hands on one, don’t let this deter you from picking one up.