Sonos is offering a special limited deal for its new Sonos One smart speaker, which works with Amazon’s Alexa right now, and is gaining support for Google Assistant in a future update: You can buy two for $349, which is the same price as one of Apple’s HomePod Siri-enabled speakers. This is likely not a coincidence.
Individually, the Sonos One retails for $199, so you get a $50 discount when you buy two. Sonos has offered similar pricing on the Sonos Play:1 in the past, but the discount on the new One means you get a newer model, with ambient microphone and smart assistant capabilities thrown into the mix.
Reviews thus far have praised the Sonos One highly for both its sound quality and its Alexa integration. Many have called it the best smart speaker currently available. Apple may give Sonos a run for its money when it comes to sound quality with the HomePod, which goes up for pre-sale this Friday and begins shipping on February 9, but Sonos has more flexibility when it comes to working with various music services, and supporting different intelligent voice agents (with arguably more smarts than Siri, too).
Two Sonos One speakers for the price of one HomePod also has other advantages: You can put the smart speakers in different rooms, of course, but you can also set them up as a stereo pair, and achieve true stereo sound separation which will make for better overall quality vs. having multiple tweeters packed into the same single unit spaced not very far apart.
Kudos to Sonos for spotting an opportunity left open by a competitor and capitalizing quickly. The Sonos One will also get AirPlay 2 compatibility in 2018, Sonos announced previously, so your well-served even if you’re an Apple device and service user generally.