Sonos yesterday announced a new product, Sonos Beam.
Sonos Beam is a living room speaker, smaller than traditional sound bars.
The speaker is one of the first we have seen to smoothly support multiple voice assistants.
Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google coming later in the year – sorry Microsoft no mention of Cortana.
At the launch event, in California USA, Sonos demonstrated the voice functionality. Asking Siri to play a song and then asking Alexa what song was playing.
Sonos Beam can also control your TV, allowing you to use your chosen voice assistant to change channel or increase the volume – this is done via the HDMI connection to the TV. If you have an Amazon FireTV it can also connect with Alexa and turn on your favourite program.
This is not Sonos’s first move into TV audio. They released their Playbar in 2013 followed by their flat version, Playbase in 2017. Beam will cost less than half and support Dolby 5.1.
As with the rest of the Sonos range it can be grouped with other speakers creating whole home audio. Alternatively it can work independently playing different music to allow multi-room audio.
Sonos are rumoured to be floating later in the year. This is yet more to show potential investors they can also take a share of the lucrative Smart Home market!
Sonos Bean will be available in black and white and will be released on 17th July, costing £399. Pre-sale orders can be placed today.