Limitations of Alexa in SONOS One

I'm not disputing anyone's concerns or questioning their opinions, but I see this differently. I ordered my first Sonos One when it was announced, knowing full well that as an early adopter there were going to be unanticipated problems, missing features, and other issues that would cause me trouble. In retrospect this was no different when I ordered my first two Echos long before Amazon shipped them out.

I experienced disappointment with both the Echo and the Sonos One. I remember with the Echo wondering why I had spent the money in the first place. It seemed like a cute idea, but also an unfulfilled promise. The Echo could hardly do anything useful at all, the voice recognition was often humorously errant, and there were few 'skills' or streaming options available. Now, three years later, the Echo practically runs my house and I don't have time to explore all the skills one can find.

With the Sonos One, I've experienced a similar curve -- but over a much shorter time. It was terrible at first. But in the two months its been publicly available, I've seen dramatic improvements in responsiveness, broken Alexa features fixed (with promises of more to come) and evidence of a concerted effort by Sonos to get it right—at least so far as Amazon will allow. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done, but they've also come a long way. And next year, they'll be adding Google integration, which is sure to give Sonos a whole new set of headaches.

I'm up to four Sonos Ones now, and with the recent improvements in responsiveness to the wake word, I'm probably going to buy a fifth next week. Yes, there are still missing or broken features, some that matter a lot to me and some that don't. No question, not everybody wants to put up with those issues. If waiting for Sonos to work through these issues isn't for you, if you don't like being a beta tester or buying a product that we all know isn't quite finished, I understand that. Return them. Personally, and this is just me, I'm wiling to gamble that things will get a lot better soon. Let's hope they do or my wife is going to take away my credit card again. ?

If Sonos, is listening it is a shame as a golden opportunity is being lost. My biggest desire in buying Sonos One was good quality music that I could easily control via voice throughout my house Using a combo of Sonos Ones and Dots (6 total) . That breaks immediately as "everywhere" will not recognize Dots and Sonos Ones together - I mistakenly assumed that was a no-brainer. Other annoying issue is that Spotify can source different streams simultaneously even though I only have one acct - nice in one way but it soon becomes difficult to find out who's in charge between the Sonos, Alexa and Spotify Apps. Hoping it's just growing pains but too much pain for this consume who has spent way too much time in the community and web pages trying to make it all work before giving up.

Ok so looks like I dropped into the Sonos One at the correct time. A very nice Christmas present that has integrated perfectly into my existing set up. No issues with commands as I have read earlier and a joy to hear all of Alexa's comments now in glorious Sonos sound. A few bits missing from my dot but minor and not worth listing as with previous Sonos experience these are just a matter of time before they will all be available. So from me a big well done Sonos and can't wait to see what's in this post in 6 months time so it's a hold on to your hats guts this ride just got good.