Sonos stated over a year ago that the integration was coming, but sent out a press release in November announcing it wouldn’t meet its 2018 timeframe for Google Assistant support.
After speculating that Sonos need to do something to bolster sales, they revealed new Google Assistant capabilities on the Sonos Beam and Sonos speakers at CES 2019, a feature long-promised and delayed, no rollout date was provided.
According to reports, the speakers in the demo, are in the very early stages of beta-testing, Sonos and Google have given no indication of when Google Assistant-enabled speakers will be available for purchase.
At CES, Sonos demonstrated Google Assistant working on the Sonos Beam, according to reports the Beam responded quickly to questions, requests to play music, and was able to provide weather forecasts, add appointments to Google calendar and turn on a TV.
As Sonos allows users to control devices with the app, Alexa, or another integrated voice-assistant, some issues arise.
There are concerns that Sonos speakers won’t be able to integrate entirely with Google Home systems and apparently you can’t set one Sonos speaker to both Alexa and Google Assistant, you’ll have to choose when setting up the device.
Demonstrators stated that users will be able to use both systems in one whole-system and make them work together, i.e. control Alexa configured speakers with Google Assistant and Sonos speakers without voice-assistant capabilities down the line.
It seems that Sonos still needs “a bit more time to get the experience right”.
