I’ve seen this question asked a few times here over the years with varying responses. Very much a first-world problem, but here’s the situation:

I got an Era 100 for a vacation property to try it out.  I set it up no problem and mostly use it to play music via Alexa and Spotify or Pandora.  Happy with how it worked, I bought two more, one for home and another to pair with the first Era 100.

Of course, I can’t get the various skills to work on the home one.  Alexa works for the Amazon-type stuff, but can’t do any skills like playing music.  From what I can tell, this is an Amazon-induced problem, but I don’t do any home automation through Alexa like lights.

If at all possible, I really don’t like to have to open up an app in my phone to do  stuff like turn music on.

So here’s the question: Am I best served going with Sonos in one house and something else like a Bose speaker in the other? My priority is to have things work the same way (i.e. I just say Alexa, do whatever, and it does it). It seems like trying to make Sonos work fully with Alexa in both is going to be a technical pain and likely to not work flawlessly.  I will likely get some more Sonos stuff for the vacation place, but don’t need more than one smart speaker at home.

Alternatively, it seems like I could use the Sonos Voice Control to make Spotify work, and just use Alexa for the basic Amazon stuff like asking about deliveries.  It seems a little annoying to have to use to different voice apps on one device, but also not that big a deal. I’ve played around a little at the Sonos Voice Control seems functional enough, but I’m a little spooked about this email that the Sonos CEO just sent out.  I’m new to Sonos so don’t get the history.