Question

Alexa on sonos

  • 5 March 2017
  • 8 replies
  • 20464 views

Hi everyone I've just started my Sonos setup with a play 5, is Amazon's Alexa connection available now, and is there any difference in buying the more expensive Echo over the Dot or do they both connect in the same way.

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8 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +7
Alexa is not yet natively available to Sonos. However there should be no real difference in connecting the full echo speaker vs the echo dot. The only material difference between the two is that the full echo has a much more substantial speaker that can be used for reasonable music playback. Sonos is expected to announce full echo support later this year. It is also expected that further in the future they will support other smart home devices possibly including Google Play and the like.
The Alexa integration is not available now, it is scheduled for later this year. Amazon and Sonos have stated that it will work with all Alexa enabled devices; Echo, Dot, Tap, Fire TV and Fire tablets.
Sonos is expected to announce full echo support later this year.
I am not sure about the "full" part - has Sonos said so? I have my doubts whether/when using Alexa via Sonos will be fully equivalent to using an Amazon standalone Echo/Dot in terms of voice enabled features; that may not happen in 2017.
Userlevel 5
Badge +10
[quote=Kumar] ...I have my doubts whether/when using Alexa via Sonos will be equivalent to using an Amazon standalone Echo/Dot in terms of voice enabled features; that may not happen in 2017.


I'm not sure that I ever expect Alexa to operate over Sonos products without an existing Dot/Echo, etc... in place inside the household. I suspect it will simply be a method of allowing the Amazon ecosystem to control the Sonos players and environment.... "Alexa play xxxxxx in the living room"... But maybe... or perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by the above statement?
What I meant was whether even with a Dot connected in some way to a Sonos unit, will it will offer voice control over all that the Sonos unit can play - be it NAS or streamed service supplied music - in all the ways that the Dot can play Amazon supplied content today? I think even if this happens, it will happen in phases with just the first phase roll out in 2017. And what that first phase will include, we can only speculate. So compared to an existing Dot, voice control over Sonos in 2017 after the Alexa integration is released will only be a limited subset of the Dot voice control capability today.
Userlevel 4
Badge +13
Whether or not Alexa support comes along, it won't be much good to me and I suspect others also if it doesn't support Apple Music!
I wish Alexa worked with Sonos so that I could use it to control Spotify. It doesn't bother me that it won't work with Apple Music. I tried Apple Music and it was really cumbersome. iTunes bums me out.
It will, sometime this year, according to the press releases that Sonos has made.