Sonos
- At a new event Wednesday morning, Sonos announced its newest product - the Sonos Beam, a home theater soundbar that's powered by Amazon's Alexa and, later, Apple's Siri.
- Sonos says that Google Assistant will also be come to the device later.
- The Sonos Beam will be available for preorder starting today, and will be $399.
At a news event Wednesday, speaker company Sonos announced the Sonos Beam, a $399 smart home theater soundbar with the Amazon Alexa virtual assistant built-in - with support for Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant coming down the line.
The $399 Sonos Beam will let you speak directly to Alexa out of the box, and a software update coming in early July will introduce Apple's Siri to the party, too. Google Assistant will also be introduced to the speaker in the future, but it's unclear when that will happen.
The speaker is 60 percent smaller than the existing Sonos Bar, which retails for $699, and intended to sit on an entertainment system, under a television.
At the event, Sonos also announced that several of its prior hardware products, which already offer Alexa, will be getting Siri, too, as well as the updated Apple AirPlay 2 wireless audio standard. Sonos says that this will bring "continuity" to its product lineup.
Sonos VP of marketing Alan Mask demonstrated this virtual assistant cooperation by asking Siri to start playing a song on the Sonos Beam... and then asking Alexa to change the song.
The other Sonos devices that will be able to adopt Siri and AirPlay in early July are the Sonos 1, the second generation Sonos Play 5, and the Sonos Play Base.