Here at WIRED, we like Sonos[1] speakers. Throughout the last six years, we’ve reviewed everything from its small Play:1 speaker to its new Beam and recommended every one of them. But it’s not cheap to turn your home into a Sonos-powered shrine to sound. Like Apple products, Sonos speakers are built to work with other Sonos speakers, and don’t come cheap, starting at $200 for the least expensive, smallest model. But which ones should you buy? Read on for our recommendations.
Updated August 1, 2018: We've added the Sonos Beam soundbar to our recommendations and updated the guide for Late 2018.
1. Best Sonos Speaker
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The Sonos One (8/10, WIRED Recommends[3]) is just about the smallest Sonos speaker, but it still packs enough oomph to fill most rooms and its hands-free Alexa integration is a lot of fun. Sonos took the time to make Alexa sound great[4], and thanks to its voice commands, the Sonos One has become my go-to speaker. It holds the premiere spot in my kitchen, where I like to listen to tunes the most each day. Alexa works like normal, and can play music, tell you the weather, find a recipe, and answer simple questions. Amazon keeps adding Skills to Alexa, making it more useful all the time. Support for Google Assistant is promised for 2018. The Sonos One is also the first third-party Alexa device that lets you use voice control to stream Spotify.
I'll recommend other Sonos speakers in this guide, but you also can’t go wrong just buying 2-4 Sonos Ones to fill your house up. You get a discount on orders of 2 or more[5]. They’re much...