After receiving the big marketing email pushing Sonos + Alexia integration and taking advantage of the Echo Dot discount offer I have a some early thoughts/opinions to share:



--Setup

Setting up an Echo Dot was fairly simply but I already had a full sized Amazon Echo and the mobile app installed on my iPhone which made things a lot easier. (Note, the Alexia app on IOS is quite possibly the worst app I've used... confusing, slow...)

--Sonos Integration

This went fine. Make sure you've updated your Sonos system to the latest release via your normal Sonos app before you start. The video and steps on this page helped a lot as just going in and adding the 'Skill' on the Alexia app was useless if done alone.

https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4158/~/setting-up-amazon-alexa-on-sonos



--Adding Devices

This is in the above steps but the screens did look different then what I actually say (not a list of rooms, but a grid of icons). Also, while there appears to be the ability to 'Group' devices within the Alexia app I was not able to use the groups I setup to play music on multiple Sonos speakers.



--Two Tries

The first time I spoke to me new Echo Dot and said "Alexia, play Maroon Five in the Living Room" she replied that she was "Unable to connect to the Living Room"... after two more attempts it worked. I did notice I had the Sonos IOS app open to the "Living Room' as well so I closed that and maybe it helped, or maybe it was just a fluke..



--Spotify Missing

Major gap in the offering is there doesn't appear to be support for Spotify. This really is 1) Stupid... they know we all use Spotify as they can run a basic report on every account and tally up the services used. 2) Annoying.... don't send me marketing emails and encourage me to purchase Echo without disclosing that the service I use 99% of the time isn't supported (again, a simple CRM query would have provided that important piece of information. )

Sonos says it's working on support for Spotify but in standard Sonos ways they are extremely vague of 'when' this will happen.



Also, this is twice as annoying because within the Alexia app I can define music services, Spotify being on that list.... I went through that setup not really understanding the relationship between those Music services and the ones I already have setup in the Sonos app, because the Alexia app prompted me to "Setup music services to use your new devices.." I don't think this was needed to play the services already on your Sonos app but that is confusing as hell.



--Pandora Control

So, instead I've been listening to Pandora and can get Echo Dot to play now play music... it seems to choose Pandora as the default service to play on my Sonos but only a single song at a time, which is silly. I have even tried saying "Alexia, play Pandora Radio Maroon Five in the Living Room' and she gets it right but after one song, it stops.



Also, after a Pandora station starts I asked Alexia to stop the music and she replied she can only stop music that is playing (it was)... tried this using multiple versions of voice commands (Alexia, stop playing sonos in the living room..' and she always insisted the music was not playing.



It would be nice to understand how to play a real Pandora station (Radio) without stopping.

It would also be nice to understand how to select the music service you want Sonos to play from.

It would be nice to know how the music services you setup in the Alexia app work with (or don't) with your Sonos

It would be nice to know how to set a default music service to play when you don't use voice command to choose one.



This would be a really good BETA product, but not ready for prime time and should never have been used in sales and marketing.