Amazon Echo, Google Home Mini, or Sonos One – which smart speaker should you buy?

Get hands-free music and smart-home capabilities with the latest speakers
New look: Amazon Echo has been upgraded with the new 2nd-generation model
Amazon
Ben Travis8 November 2017

Welcome to the future: where we can speak to our speakers, and they speak back.

The smart speaker market has boomed massively in the last 18 months with the launches of Amazon Echo and Google Home – and the market is getting increasingly competitive.

If you’re looking for a speaker that can update you on the news and weather, set alarms and shopping lists, or play music from various sources, there are increasing amounts of options out there.

Here’s our pick, depending on your priorities.

Best for music: Sonos One

Sonos

Amazon Echo and Google Home both offer basic sound quality, but struggle when you turn the volume higher – especially the latter. If your main priority for a smart speaker is that it’s, well, a great speaker, look no further than the Sonos One.

Long before smart speakers were even a thing, Sonos ruled the multi-room audio scene thanks to its superior audio quality, and while its app is features a slightly confusing array of menus, it can draw music from a huge range of sources.

Sonos One looks near identical to the Sonos PLAY:1, with one key difference: it has Amazon’s Alexa built-in, meaning you can ask for songs and artists rather than trawling through the app.

Set-up is simple, if slightly long-winded – the Sonos app walks you through the initial speaker set-up, which involves plugging the speaker into your wireless router via a supplied Ethernet cable. Then there’s a few hoops to jump through in setting up a Sonos account, downloading the Alexa app, and connecting them to each other.

The set-up is worth it. Sonos’ reputation for audio quality is well-earned, and the Sonos One features a great balance of smooth, clean bass, and well-defined mids and highs. The speaker is considerably larger and denser than Amazon Echo and Google Home, and the volume at the three-quarter mark is loud enough to annoy your neighbours in London.

There’s one key drawback – if Sonos One is a great speaker, it’s not a reliable smart speaker yet. For now it can only play through Amazon’s own Music Unlimited service when you request songs over voice command – if you’re a Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, or Apple Music member, you’ll still have to control that through the app. Sonos is apparently working on Spotify voice control, but it’s disappointing that the functionality doesn't exist straight out of the box – especially when Spotify can play through Amazon Echo.

I’ve also experienced an issue where voice commands are registered, but the requests aren’t played through the speaker. Ask it to ‘play BBC Radio 1’, and it responds with ‘now playing BBC Radio 1 from Tune In’, but the station doesn’t play. There is a fix which involves disabling and re-enabling the Sonos skill in the Alexa app, but expect similar glitches as Sonos continues to work out the kinks.

If music comes first and smart features come second, Sonos One is the one for you – or if you already have Sonos, the latest system update means you can buy a £50 Amazon Echo Dot and connect it to your existing set-up for voice control.

£199, sonos.com

Best for home control: Amazon Echo Plus / Google Home

Amazon / Google

The Amazon vs Google debate rumbles on – and the truth is, they both do mostly the same thing. Google Home and Amazon’s new 2nd-gen Echo and Echo Plus act as smart home hubs – the central bit of tech you’ll want to tie all your smart devices together. If you’re planning to buy smart locks, thermostats, and lights, these are the ones to consider.

If you’re future-proofing your entire living room, smart hubs can connect to all kinds of smart products around your home – light bulbs, roombas, your heating, and more – so you can control them with your voice.

The Echo Plus does this most efficiently – you can ask it to discover your smart devices, and it automatically scans your wi-fi network to detect them, making it theoretically an easy set-up. Initial user reviews of the Plus suggest that the device detection could do with a bit of work, though expect software updates to improve these features.

Google Home and the standard Echo require you to link devices manually through their respective apps. Once detected, you can assign different ‘rooms’ to each device so you can ask Google or Alexa to turn specific lights on or off, or set a temperature in your home.

Preference between Echo and Home relies largely on whether you’re more inclined towards Google’s more techy but less intuitive systems, or if you want Amazon’s ease of use.

One key bonus of the Echo Plus: Amazon is currently shipping it with a free Philips Hue bulb to get your smart home properly started.

Amazon Echo Plus: £139.99, amazon.co.uk

Google Home: £129.99, store.google.com

Best value: All-new Amazon Echo (2nd gen)

Amazon

Amazon Echo broke the first ground in the smart speaker race, and it’s just received its first major update with the arrival of a 2nd-generation incarnation.

While the original Echo was already an impressive bit of kit, the All-New Amazon Echo (as it’s currently known) improves on it in every way. For one, it’s cheaper, dropping the price significantly from £149.99 to £89.99. It’s a much more tempting biting point, and considerably undercuts Google Home’s £129.99 cost.

The new version is also smaller – slightly wider, much shorter – without sacrificing on sound. The redesign wisely takes notes from Google Home’s fabric mesh, swapping the original’s cold and imperial tower look for a much more house-friendly fabric exterior.

As with Google Home, the outer shells are exchangeable too – there are three fabric looks, two wooden ones, and one silver. Fabric will probably look best in your living room – or wood if you’re going for a Scandi vibe –while the silver finish is perhaps more suited to the kitchen.

The set-up is quick and easy – plug the speaker in, download the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet, and it guides you through the process of connecting Echo to your wi-fi network. The app allows you to download extra Skills, like an App Store for the speaker.

The real winner between Alexa and Google Assistant will largely come down to personal choice – for us, Alexa comes out sightly ahead. Those already invested in Google’s ecosystem are probably best off sticking there, but from months of casual use with Echo and Google Home, Alexa seemed to be more responsive, appeared to understand more, and was less dependent on the app.

If the race between Amazon Echo and Google Home was alright tight, the price drop on the 2nd-gen Echo places it firmly as the best-value smart speaker out there.

£89.99, amazon.co.uk

Best for your bedside: Google Home Mini

Google

If you mostly want an assistant to set alarms, play quiet music or answer basic questions, the budget Google Home Mini can do all that, and it will fit neatly on your bedside table.

It comes in at £50 with all the tricks of its bigger sibling, but with much smaller speakers inside – they’re not designed for cranking up the volume, but it should handle a bit of morning radio.

If you’re already committed to Amazon’s ecosystem and want a smart speaker for the bedroom, get the £50 Echo Dot (or the £90 2nd-gen Echo if you want extra volume) – but overall we prefer the Google Home Mini for its design, a lovely pebble-shaped disc with a button-free fabric upper side that will look nice and inconspicuous next to your lamp.

One to watch: Apple HomePod

Apple

Apple is playing catch-up with Amazon and Google with the HomePod, a late entry into the smart speaker race. While Echo and Home have already worked their way into millions of households, don’t bet against Apple – as its acquisition of Beats has shown, the company is strong at creating audio products that work seamlessly within its own ecosystem.

It remains to be seen whether Siri can really stand up to Alexa and Google in speaker form, but HomePod’s seven-tweeter and high-excursion woofer set-up suggests that it may be a cut above Echo and Home in the audio quality stakes.

Apple HomePod will be released in December.

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