The biggest multiroom speaker platform of Sonos hasn’t quite made a full transition to supporting every major smart speaker platform, and apparently it still won’t until next year.
Have a heart for folks who want a smart speaker system, but have already bought into another multiroom speaker platform like Sonos. While buying into a smart speaker system should be as easy as buying the speakers you want and connecting with the platform, folks with Sonos don’t quite get that luxury, at least not yet.
While Sonos is arguably the most successful multiroom speaker platform in the world, its connection to the world of speakers you can talk to and command only extends to Amazon’s Alexa platform, which was added in last year’s Sonos One.
A few other speakers have since received the support, including the recent update to a soundbar that was the Sonos Beam, but your choice for smart speaker control in Sonos has been either through Amazon or nothing. And that means if you wanted to, you could have Sonos speakers talk to an Amazon Echo, for instance, but not to a Google Home or Home Hub.
Sonos did say Google Assistant support was coming, but suggested it would come at the back half of 2018.
Sadly, we’re there now, and Sonos’ Google integration is nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, the company does have an idea for when it’s coming: soon, and sometime next year.
According to its blog, Sonos needs to “lock down a date in 2019” as it needs “a bit more time to get the experience right”.
A private beta will kick off soon, though beta testers will need to commit to at least 14 hours of listening per week and use ten voice commands daily, but if you’re keen to integrate a Sonos with any Google smart speakers (*raises Pickr’s collective hand*), you could see the connection before anyone else.
