Prominent Collaborator I

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No Google Assistant on Era 100/300 - support for existing speakers

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So the Sonos Era 100 and 300 have been officially announced - without support for Google Assistant.

The following article from The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/23627044/sonos-era-300-100-announced-price-features-hands-on) mentions this:

‘Sonos says this is due to changes that Google has implemented for companies that want to run the voice service on third-party hardware. Patrick Spence claims it’s unrelated to the ongoing legal battle between the two companies and insists Assistant is now more of a “heavy engineering lift” than it was before. “Right now, we don’t see it being worth the effort. We hope Google will take another path that will allow us to continue to offer it in more of a lightweight manner the way we do today.”’

Does this mean that those new speakers cannot be controlled by an additional Google Nest speaker either via the Google Home integration? And will this lack of Google Assistant support eventually affect owners of existing Sonos devices, such as the Sonos One/Move/Beam/Arc?

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melvimbeAnswer

I would assume it works like existing speakers that do not have GA installed. They can be controlled through any GA enabled speaker, including other Sonos speakers.

Danny

melvimbeAnswer

I would assume it works like existing speakers that do not have GA installed. They can be controlled through any GA enabled speaker, including other Sonos speakers.

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Danny

106rallye

If the 100 really is meant to succeed the One this does present a problem for people wanting voice control in languages that are unsupported by Alexa and SVC. Like my native language, Dutch. Even if this is Google’s doing, I do feel a bit left out.

Using a Nest Mini is a work around, not a solution.

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awgneo

Lyricist II

This move is entirely unacceptable and makes the entire Era line incompatible with my household. Upgrading is not an option without Google Assistant.

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Airgetlam

Then you may want to complain directly to Google, since they’re the ones that changed the requirements and caused Sonos to rethink adding the Google voice assistant to the new Era speakers.

I do feel your pain, but then if you have current Sonos speakers that work with Google assistant, they’ll be able to control the new speakers. It does limit the number of microphones to pick up your voice, however.

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Bruce

D

DominikDominik

Contributor II

Personally I would even consider getting new Era speakers without Google Assistant, but they don’t even support Alexa in Poland. So I would be left with no assistant support besides simple Sonos Voice Control…

Interestingly on the Polish website they claim that you can use Alexa to control it, but it’s probably due to semi-automatic translation

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Mr. T

Personally I would even consider getting new Era speakers without Google Assistant, but they don’t even support Alexa in Poland. So I would be left with no assistant support besides simple Sonos Voice Control…

Interestingly on the Polish website they claim that you can use Alexa to control it, but it’s probably due to semi-automatic translation.

Support for Alexa on Sonos in Poland is coming soon.

https://www.pocket-lint.com/sonos-alexa-voice-control-availability-countries-how-it-works/

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jgatie

@DominikDominik,

Please do not Spam your complaint to multiple threads. It is both Spamming and off-topic, and is against the TOS you agreed to when you signed up for this site.

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bravejerk

Lyricist I

Was also considering upgrading some of my Sonos One speakers, but decided not to due lack of GA support. I’m not a big fan of other assistants and would like to keep my home smart.

I’m disappointed to see Sonos using “Premium Smart Speaker” for something that drops support of GA compared to the old models and not even highlighting this anywhere on the product page — I just accidentally noticed while checking details and ended up on this page.

One can say it’s a Google’s problem and indeed partially it is, however I was about to pay €500 for the speaker and the previous model already does what I want, so that being said I will blame it fully on Sonos.

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joshbutleruk

Contributor I

Anyone familiar with implementation of voice assistants that knows what’s changed with Google assistant that makes it more of a “heavy engineering lift”?

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awgneo

Lyricist II

@joshbutleruk exactly; I’ve seen no developer announcements or news articles in these regards and I follow Google from a developer’s perspective quite closely.

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