Why no voice control in the new Sonos Five?

Most likely not enough space to fit the array of microphones necessary. There could be some market research that suggests that they’re likely to have a different use in most cases, where the added expense of adding mics wouldn’t be cost beneficial, I’m not sure.

Also the Play 5 is a sealed box design, adding microphones would mean holes which would compromise the sound. Adding a small section for microphones which allows the rest of the enclosure to remain sealed would take away too much internal space.

And the user can add voice control using an Echo Dot or Google Mini, which (FWIW) would be my preferred method anyway, and what I currently use with all my Play:5s.

Agreed the Sonos voice integration is so poor a cheap DOT would at least insure it can actually hear you, understand and execute your command. My family have pretty much given up using Alexa on Sonos.

That suggests to me that not being given - and since I will stay legacy I will now never get it - the Sonos Alexa integration in India isn’t a big loss to someone like me that has many zones with Sonos Line In, where wiring something like a Show 5/8 to it gives excellent results for voice control for not a lot of money. And the icing on that cake is something that is in a distant Sonos future - album art for streamed and NAS sourced music.