It has been in the works for nearly two years, but as of today, the Google Assistant is available on the Sonos One and Beam smart speakers.
With the arrival of Google Assistant, Sonos is the first to use multiple voice assistants on the same device – Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Sonos has wanted to bring multiple voice assistants to its products, that way it is able to appeal to all of its users. Whether they are in the Amazon Alexa ecosystem or in the Google Assistant ecosystem, the Sonos One and Beam will work for both groups of people.
Customers will be able to use both Assistants at the same time, which is actually a big deal. Typically, when you have two Assistants like this, you have to choose one during setup and the other is gone until you do a factory reset and choose it when re-setting up the speaker. But Sonos is allowing you to use both – which you can set up in the Settings of the Sonos app.
You can use Sonos to play a song on the speaker in your living room, then ask Alexa in the kitchen, what is playing. Though you likely wouldn’t do that often, as you could simply ask Google. However, this means that everyone in your home will be able to use the digital assistant of their choice. Whether that is Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Say your significant other is a bigger fan of Alexa versus Google Assistant, they can use that while you use the other.
Think of the Sonos One and Sonos Beam as a Google Home, now. Anything that you can do with a Google Home, you’ll be able to do with the Sonos One and Beam. That includes asking Google Assistant for the weather, asking what’s in the news, controlling your smart home and even playing audio. That includes music, audiobooks, podcasts and news. With multi-room audio, you can ask Google Assistant to play your playlist on multiple Sonos speakers in your home.
Google Assistant on Sonos is something that customers have been waiting for since the Sonos One was announced in Fall of 2017. Sonos said that it would be available in the first quarter of 2018, but that obviously didn’t happen. After many delays, the Google Assistant is finally available on Sonos One and Beam. It is also available for other Sonos speakers, but you will need a Google Home to utilize it. Essentially it won’t be built-in on speakers like the PLAY:1 and PLAY:3. But you can ask Google to play something on those speakers.
Sonos says that a free software update will begin rolling out today in the US for Google Assistant. Just open the Sonos app on your smartphone, and it should be available. If it is not available right away, just be patient, as this might be a slow rollout at first. It’ll be coming to other countries in July. Which include the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, and The Netherlands. More countries will follow later this Summer.