Google Assistant support for the Sonos One and Beam is coming to Canada in July

After months and months of delays, we now have a timeline for when the Sonos One and Sonos Beam are getting Google Assistant support. The feature has started to roll out in the US, allowing users to say “Hey Google” to access Google’s voice assistant. Countries like Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and France are getting the feature in July, with more countries following after. Once it makes its way here, you will be able to issue commands to Google Assistant, ask it questions, and have it control other Assistant-supported smart home devices.

Source: 9to5Google

Alexa can control Apple Music on Sonos speakers in a handful of countries

Unfortunately, we aren’t included there yet. But listeners in the US, the UK, and Ireland can now use Alexa to control Apple Music on their Sonos speakers, specifically the Sonos One, Beam, or Echo devices. You need to enable the Apple Music skill on the Alexa app and link your account. And if you can’t set the service as your default, you will have to add the words “on Apple Music” to your requests.

Sonos One and Beam get Alexa Announcements

Amazon has started to bring one of the useful features of Alexa to the Sonos One and Beam: Alexa Announcements. This feature will let you broadcast one-way messages to all Alexa-enabled devices in your house. So, if you want to call your family for dinner or remind them about bed time, you can do it with these Alexa-enabled Sonos speakers. It’s coming first to Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom and will be available for English messages for now. The firmware update to enable this feature should be coming your way now so keep an eye out for it. You don’t need to do anything as it’ll automatically just update your speaker when it’s idle.

Sonos Beam smart soundbar now available in Canada

Sonos Beam will be officially available via www.sonos.com and global retail partners starting tomorrow.

We tested this Alexa-powered soundbar and smart speaker and found it to be, "one of the best products that launched this year and is the smartest choice for assistant-enabled speaker buyers who have a need for a soundbar for their TVs, as well as a powerful and expandable smart speaker that also manages the highest-fidelity and best quality audio in the $499.99 price range." Sonos Beam continues to impress as we've used it in tandem with our Vizio TV to watch World Cup and Wimbledon Finals, stream shows from Netflix as well as play the latest games on the Xbox One S and the PlayStation 4.

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