The Sonos One is a

smart speaker A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant (artificial intelligence), virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and Hands-free computing, hands-free activation with the help of o ...

developed by

Sonos Sonos, Inc. is an American audio equipment manufacturer headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. The company was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, Craig Shelburne, Tom Cullen, and Trung Mai. Sonos has partnered with over 100 companies th ...

, announced on October 4, 2017 and released on October 24. The speaker contains a six-microphone array, allowing use of the virtual assistants,

Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa is a virtual assistant technology marketed by Amazon and implemented in software applications for smart phones, tablets, wireless smart speakers, and other electronic appliances. Alexa was largely developed from a Polish speech s ...

and

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on home automation and mobile devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike ...

. In 2018, the smart speaker added support for Apple's AirPlay 2. Originally slated for 2018,

integration was released in May 2019.

Design

Hardware

The Sonos One features two Class-D amplifiers, a

woofer A woofer or bass speaker is a technical term for a loudspeaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds, typically from 50 up to 200 Hz. The name is from the onomatopoeic English word for a dog's deep bark, " woof" (in contrast to a ' ...

, a

tweeter A tweeter or treble speaker is a special type of loudspeaker (usually dome, inverse dome or horn-type) that is designed to produce high audio frequencies, typically from 2,000 to 20,000 Hertz, Hz. The name is derived from the high pitched sound ...

, and six far-field microphones.
Running on a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

motherboard, it is equipped with an AC and

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

port on the back of the speaker and is capable of 802.11b/g (

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

3) Wi-Fi connection.
When connected to the network using Ethernet, the speaker can also act as a Sonos BOOST.

Software

The Sonos Controller app mainly controls and sets up the speaker, but can also connect other music services like

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers. It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights manag ...

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM that is based in Oakland, California in the United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Proje ...

, and

iHeartRadio iHeartRadio (often shortened to just "iHeart") is an American freemium broadcast, podcast, radio streaming and Music Streaming platform owned by iHeartMedia. Founded in August 2008, iHeartRadio serves as the national umbrella brand for iHeart ...

through voice interaction. As with its predecessor, the speaker can link with SonosNet, a

mesh network A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...

to play media for one, some or all speakers regardless of location. The speaker communicates with the companion app and music streaming services through

Sonos One Gen 2

The second generation of the Sonos One increased the memory, added

Bluetooth Low Energy Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE, colloquially BLE, formerly marketed as Bluetooth Smart) is a wireless personal area network technology designed and marketed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) aimed at novel applications ...

(which can not be used for audio playback) and updated the processor. The three updates do not include any new features from the Gen 1s. Sonos states that the original Ones will continue to support all current features but the Gen 2 may allow them to add new experiences that the Gen 1 will not be able to support. The Gen 1 and Gen 2 will work as a stereo pair and look and sound the same. The only visual difference is the branding on the bottom of the Gen 2. Gen 2 supports 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) connectivity.

Sonos One SL

In addition to the Gen 2, Sonos released the One SL in September 2019. Based on the outside design and its functionality the SL version is the same as the Gen 2 but without microphones, making it incompatible with Alexa or Google Assistant. It is not known if the One and the One SL have the same internal electronics and speaker units, so the quality could be different. The SL is intended as the replacement for the Play:1 speakers and addresses the concerns that some users have with smart technology.

References

{{Smart speaker Smart speakers Sonos Amazon Alexa