D Griff wrote: ↑Thu Aug 08, 2019 9:18 am
Detroit wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:14 pm
Yep, they play through the Sonos app...they seem to act exactly like other Sonos speakers, but we really dig the design.
Good to know about Costco. That's a decent discount, but can save $70 from that by buying two Ikea ones.
It's an interesting move from Sonos. The company must be struggling and needs to expand into the low end of the market. Working with Ikea is an interesting way to expand possibly without tainting the brand.
Sonos at one time owned about 95% of this market and now has around 80%. That said, the market is growing. I'm sure they're doing fine, but they were the only known game in town and now there's quite a bit of competition. We actually have our own product we manufacture called Autonomic which competes in that space but is only sold through the custom integrator market. Paersonally I think that Yamaha MusicCast is dope and would likely go in that direction. Sonos is definitely nice though, and it's nice to see some lower cost options as they lose market share. Margin on some of their stuff must be wild, like 80+ points.
After living with them for a few days, I'm a bit meh.
A few years ago, Vizio got into the smart speaker WiFi game. It didn't go well, and we found these "Crave 360" speakers at Costco for just over $100 a year ago. They're WiFi and work with Google Assistant/Home. We eventually bought 3 of them and put them all over the house, assigning them to rooms through Google Home. We have a few Google homes throughout the house, and we got used to saying "Hey Google, play Metallica in the Kitchen"...Google home also let you bundle speakers, so you could say "Hey Google, play Metallica on the first floor" or whatever. It worked awesome.
The last few months, a few of the speakers seemed to be having connection issues. They would just randomly cut out, which got annoying. I assumed it was the old tech form the now defunct Vizio audio brand, so we started considering a replacement.
We bought the Sonos speakers from Ikea because they a.) sound better b.) look better and c.) hoped they'd connect more reliably. All of that has proven to be true, but we've had to adjust how we use them. They won't bundle with our other google home speakers, so we have to keep them separate...which will mean buying more eventually. Voice control through Google home is spotty at best. While Google will let you bundle speakers in the Home app, Sonos makes you do it on the fly in the app. Which I guess is fine, but I got used to just tapping the speaker group I wanted music to play on, not adding them individually every time.
I honestly preferred the previous Google home experience to the Sonos one. I'm somewhat considering returning or selling the Ikea Sonos speakers and looking for a more reliable speaker that works with Google Home like the Vizios did. Wife loves the way the Sonos looks, but when I got home I caught her yelling at Google because it wasn't playing the music she wanted on the speakers she wanted "These things are fucking dumb" she yelled...but conceded that she loved the look and the sound.