The best smart speakers you can buy in 2018
No home is complete these days without an AI-infused speaker - but which one is right for you?
GET SMART
So you’ve decided it’s time to find a partner and settle down. Good for you. The question is: who’s the lucky AI assistant going to be? Amazon’s Echo is the obvious choice but with Alexa popping up in a load of other products you don’t necessarily need to go with the original vessel, particularly when other brands offer more hi-fi nous – and that’s what a speaker is all about, no? Yes and no. Gone are the days when a speaker was purely for blasting out tunes; this voice-controlled bunch can control your smart home too. So which one should you take home to live with happily ever after? Sit back and let Stuff play smart assistant matchmaker.
1) SONOS ONE
The One is an altogether more well-rounded device than it was at launch. It now supports Spotify with voice controls, as well as Amazon Music and TuneIn Radio, and the Alexa-incurred hiccups we first encountered seem to have been fixed after a series of software updates. The only issue we’ve still got with our One? It’s a little hard of hearing compared to Amazon’s Echo. You’ll often need to shout twice in the morning to turn your alarm off. But the trade-off for such bleary-eyed hollering is a truly excellent wireless speaker. Given the One is a carbon copy of the already brilliant Play:1 with a fresh paint job and the same internal driver configuration, that’s no surprise at all. Still, alongside the HomePod, Sonos’s Alexa-powered speaker remains a class apart from the competition.
2) APPLE HOMEPOD
If you’re an iPhone owner with an Apple Music subscription, then you have a ticket to the best-sounding smart speaker money can buy. From Babymetal to Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, the HomePod does a great job no matter what genre you throw at it. If music is your priority when it comes to a speaker’s performance – and you’re not subscribed to Spotify – then we’ve got no qualms about recommending it over anything else we’ve tested here. It’s on the ‘smart’ side of things that the HomePod falls short, as Siri lacks the knowhow and depth of talent that you’ll find with Alexa. Given how reluctant Apple’s been to get on with other brands, we’ve no reason to think this will change. And so Apple’s new speaker is more brawn than brains.
3) UE BLAST
Whether you’re after a talkative travel companion or don’t want a speaker cluttering up your kitchen all the time, the Blast fits in and around your plans rather than standing in place waiting for instruction – especially since it supports wireless charging with the optional PowerUp pad. You can hurl the thing in your nearest rucksack without needing to rip out any cables first, and switch it on once you’re ready to dip into its 12-hour battery life. For that reason, you could happily use a Blast alongside one of the more ritzy Echos (like the screen-toting Spot) with one sitting at your bedside and the other taking flight whenever you fancy.
4) AMAZON ECHO
Just as Google wants its Android operating system plastered across every smartphone going, Alexa’s rate of multiplication is starting to put even bunny rabbits to shame. But while there’s been a veritable jamboree of speakers featuring Amazon’s voice assistant in the last year or so, very few of them come close to the Echo itself. What’s so good about the second incarnation of this all-conquering tube? In a word, affordability. Pick the right moment and you can get an Echo for roughly half the price of a Google Home, and even at full whack you’ll have to spend almost four times as much to get hold of Apple’s HomePod. This makes it a perfect companion for commitment-phobes who aren’t quite sure how far they want to kit out their smart home, but like the idea of having an AI multitasker for company in the kitchen – even if they might not quite know everything that it’s capable of.
5) GOOGLE HOME
Google’s Home is in a tough spot right now. In and of itself it’s a fine smart speaker, but it doesn’t do anything better than all of the competition here. And that makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t already committed to Google’s ecosystem. Having launched way back in November 2016, this turn of events for the Home is hardly surprising, but it does point to a curious future for Google’s original smart speaker. Should it chase sound quality à la Sonos One, which will also support Google Assistant soon, or cut a few corners to match the Amazon Echo on price? Right now, it’s doing neither – and that means you’re getting a great voice assistant wrapped inside a so-so package, which is hardly the most compelling prospect.
