Bose announce a range of voice-assistant-agnostic smart speakers

Bose has just announced a $400 home smart speaker and two soundbars that will be available in October. All three products will ship with Alexa voice support, with “other voice assistants to follow” according to the company. Each has an eight-microphone array for far-field voice recognition. AirPlay 2 functionality will be added in early 2019.

Ctrl-F “Sonos“, Replace All… “Bose“.

Today’s announcement and press release is almost a carbon copy of Sonos a year ago…

Alexa day 1, tick!
Google Assistant coming… sometime, tick!
AirPlay 2 next year, tick!

In fact, the only real difference comes via the Bose Home Speaker 500, their premium room speaker à la Apple HomePod, à la Sonos Play 5. The 500 includes a screen, which will display the cover art for the playing track and has a series of buttons along its surface that can be mapped to your favourite stations and play lists.

Available to order today the Home Speaker 500 will retail for US$399.95. The Soundbar 500 and 700 will retail for US$549.95 and US$799.95, respectively.

Source: Bose challenges Sonos with new Alexa-powered smart speaker and soundbars – The Verge