Smart speakers, also known as intelligent speakers, are still a divisive yet quickly expanding tool. In our guide, along with purchasing tips, you’ll discover further insights into this innovative and thrilling technology.
It will be useful to understand how to choose an excellent smart speaker among those currently available on the market, with a particular eye to the offers and models sold online.
These useful voice assistants represent the future of home automation, not only because they can control numerous household appliances (such as Philips Hue bulbs or food processors), but also because of thanks to the smart plugs they can control any electrical device connected to the Wi-Fi network -Fi of a house. Here we will be listing top 14 best smart speakers.
- Our best sounding Echo Dot yet – Enjoy an improved audio experience compared to any previous Echo Dot with Alexa for clearer vocals, deeper bass and vibrant sound in any room.
- Your favorite music and content – Play music, audiobooks, and podcasts from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and others or via Bluetooth throughout your home.
- Alexa is happy to help – Ask Alexa for weather updates and to set hands-free timers, get answers to your questions and even hear jokes. Need a few extra minutes in the morning? Just tap your Echo Dot to snooze your alarm.
- Alexa can show you more - Echo Show 5 includes a 5.5” display so you can see news and weather at a glance, make video calls, view compatible cameras, stream music and shows, and more.
- Small size, bigger sound – Stream your favorite music, shows, podcasts, and more from providers like Amazon Music, Spotify, and Prime Video—now with deeper bass and clearer vocals. Includes a 5.5" display so you can view shows, song titles, and more at a glance.
- Keep your home comfortable – Control compatible smart devices like lights and thermostats, even while you're away.
- Premium sound – Rich, detailed sound that automatically adapts to any room. Supports lossless HD audio available on select streaming services such as Amazon Music HD.
- Voice control your music – Stream songs from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, and more. HD requires a compatible music streaming service.
- Smart home hub – Built-in hub to voice control compatible lights, locks, and sensors. Easily set up compatible Zigbee and Matter devices or select Ring Smart Lighting solar lights and bulbs.
- MEET ECHO SPOT - A sleek smart alarm clock with Alexa and big vibrant sound. Ready to help you wake up, wind down, and so much more.
- CUSTOMIZABLE SMART CLOCK - See time, weather, and song titles at a glance, control smart home devices, and more. Personalize your display with your favorite clock face and fun colors.
- BIG VIBRANT SOUND - Enjoy rich sound with clear vocals and deep bass. Just ask Alexa to play music, podcasts, and audiobooks. See song titles and touch to control your music.
- Enjoy an immersive audio experience - Echo Studio now features spatial audio processing technology for a wider and more immersive audio experience. For stereo formats, Spatial audio processing technology creates a wider and more enveloping sound stage. Its 5 speakers produce powerful bass with improved clarity, dynamic midrange, and crisp highs. Dolby Atmos technology adds space, clarity, and depth.
- Voice control your music – Stream songs from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, and more. With Amazon Music HD, enjoy access to 90 million songs in lossless audio formats, like HD or Ultra HD, and select songs in spatial audio formats like Dolby Atmos.
- Adapts to any room – Automatically senses the acoustics of your space, fine-tuning playback for optimal sound.
- Better inside and out – Entertainment is more immersive with spatial audio and an 8" HD touchscreen. Video calling is crisper with high-quality sound and a 13 MP camera. And your home is more connected than ever with the built-in smart home hub.
- Vibrant sights, full sound – Content on Prime Video, Netflix, Fire TV Channels, and more comes to life with an HD display and room-filling spatial audio. Ask Alexa to stream Amazon Music, Apple Music, or Spotify. Subscriptions for some services required.
- Smart home, simplified – Pair and control devices compatible with Zigbee, Matter, and Thread without a separate smart home hub. Manage cameras, lights, and more using the display or your voice, or activate routines via motion. Also supports connectivity via Bluetooth and wifi.
- Echo Pop – This compact smart speaker with Alexa features full sound that's great for bedrooms and small spaces. Small enough to blend in and mighty enough to stand out.
- Control music with your voice – Ask Alexa to play music, audiobooks, and podcasts from your favorite providers like Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Sirius XM and more. Connect via Bluetooth to stream throughout your space.
- Make any space a smart space – Easily control compatible smart home devices like smart plugs or smart lights with your voice or the Alexa App.
- Powered by a 47% faster processor, the next-gen dual-tweeter acoustic architecture produces detailed stereo separation while a 25% larger midwoofer deepens the bass.¹
- Place this speaker anywhere and everywhere you want to listen. The compact design fits beautifully on your bookshelf, kitchen counter, desk, or nightstand.
- Stream from all your favorite services over WiFi. Pair a Bluetooth device with the press of a button. Connect a turntable or other audio source using an auxiliary cable and the Sonos Line-In Adapter.²
- Enhanced Audio Experience: Features a 3" woofer and 0.7" tweeter, delivering powerful bass, crisp vocals, and clear treble for room-filling sound.
- Smart Home Control: Use Google Assistant to control lights, TVs, and other compatible smart home devices with voice commands.
- Wireless Streaming: Stream music, radio, and more from popular services with built-in Chromecast and dual-band Wi-Fi 5 connectivity.
- Superb sound and performance: Fill any room in your house with stereo sound. The 25mm tweeters bring out the details in your music, while the full-range 5” woofer & 6” passive radiator deliver deep bass, ensuring you'll get the perfect audio balance.
- Inspired by retro design: JBL Authentics 200 is inspired by JBL heritage designs for a look that fits in any room, with superior JBL sound. The speaker's aluminum frame, leather-like enclosure, and Quadrex grille show the attention we paid to each detail.
- Music streaming services via built-in Wi-Fi: Experience everything from podcasts to internet radio in high definition. Or stream music throug AirPlay, Alexa Multi-Room Music (MRM), Chromecast built-in, and Spotify Connect for interruption-free streaming.
- 【Portable speaker】: 4.5 inches high, 3.5 inches in diameter; comes with TF card slot ( supports WAV / FLAC / APE / MP3 format ), 3.5 AUX input port, Type-C(Fast charging) and a lanyard for leisure, entertainment, office, indoor, outdoor, hiking, beach, etc.
- 【Clear&Delightful Sound】: The subtle little body delivers a stunning 15W sound. Well made for distortion-free sound, the Bluetooth speaker has loud highs, a crisp midrange and full bass to put you in the zone!
- 【Pairing-360° Stereo】: True Wireless Stereo function - enables two Bluetooth wireless speakers to be connected in tandem. Let's enjoy a full 360° of loud 30W music in the home theatre, at parties, on the beach, in the park or anywhere else imaginable.
- THE SUPERB WIRELESS WHOLE-HOME AUDIO SPEAKER – Set up your Home 150 over Wi-Fi network & HEOS app to enjoy seamless multi-room listening experience with the same song playing throughout the home, or different ones in every room.
- HI-RES AUDIO, WITHOUT THE HI-FI SYSTEM – Featuring a dynamic 1" tweeter and 3.5" mid-bass driver, the New Denon Home 150 is designed to reproduce accurate Denon sound with clear highs and deep lows - experience excellence in every beat
- STREAM YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, Pandora, TIDAL, TuneIn, and more via Wi-Fi, AirPlay 2, HEOS or Bluetooth. Enjoy hands-free operations with AMAZON ALEXA VOICE COMMANDS from any Echo device (sold separately)
- VALUE BUNDLE INCLUDES: Google Nest Mini 2nd Generation Bluetooth Speaker with English, Spanish, French and Portuguese Global Language Compatibility so it works everywhere, Universal Power Adapter and Quick Start Guide English Quick Start Guide with International Manual for Global Users
- IT WORKS EVERYWHERE Easy to use and will automatically start up in English when connecting to your device for the first time. This speaker works globally with support for most languages and places internationally. And its language settings can always be changed back and forth to your preferred language anytime for international use or travel at your convenience
- BLENDS RIGHT INTO YOUR HOME Looks great on a nightstand, shelf, countertop - or the wall. This Nest Mini Speaker is small and mighty with bright sound that kicks! It plugs into the wall and is powered by the global ac adapter that works internationally so it works in outlets everywhere
- Unbelievable sound: 12W of pure audio power with enhanced bass Thunders from dual neodymium drivers. An advanced digital signal processor ensures pounding bass and zero distortion at any volume.
- Intense bass: exclusive bass up technology and a patented spiral bass port boost low-end frequencies to make the beats hit even harder.
- Outdoor-proof: IPX7 protection safeguards against rain, dust, snow, and spills. Get incredible sound at home, in the yard, or anywhere else imaginable.
What to Look for Before Buying Best Smart Speakers
On the other hand, our comparison table will help you identify quickly and efficiently which smart speaker to buy because it compares prices, strengths, and weaknesses of the products at the top of the ranking for the best smart speaker.
Smart Speakers and Privacy
Smart speakers are the result of a technology that combines the use of networks and the latest discoveries in artificial intelligence. They are at the center of a somewhat controversial debate, especially regarding the aspect of personal privacy.
It is undeniable that these devices offer a series of significant advantages. However, they are still being perfected, and that their potential in bringing improvements to the quality of our lives are decidedly vast.
Their use is strictly connected to digital assistance software, such as Cortana, Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa, developed by Amazon and in rapid diffusion.
Wide Range of Uses
The intelligent speaker is not only a sophisticated alarm clock to be programmed naturally, with the only aid of voice commands.
It is a real electronic butler that will allow you to search the internet quickly and immediately, to shop online, order food, create lists of objects or events, and then program subsequent notifications, or compile playlists of songs to listen to.
How to choose best smart speakers?
Furthermore, these devices play a crucial role in the field of home automation since, by connecting the appliances to Smart Plug, through the smart speakers, it will be possible to control them with your voice.
Here’s a short video to choose the best smart speakers.
You can then ask the speaker to turn on the best smart lights as soon as you return home, for example, to start washing the laundry or to turn on the heating system, even when you are away from home, thanks to the related apps downloadable on smartphones.
The Different Options
The range of uses of smart speakers is destined to grow more and more, therefore, and this is one of the reasons why, despite conflicting opinions, their use spreads and is perfected with each passing day.
The models currently available on the market are all more or less valid, at least as regards the characteristics regarding the use and control of the connected devices. So the choice of the model to buy is subordinated exclusively to your personal needs and the available budget.
Amazon is considered the best brand of the moment, the Echo smart speakers, are enjoying enormous success thanks to the excellence of their value for money.
The Incoming Devices
What should we expect from the smart speaker market? All the smart speakers on the market are enjoying tremendous success and we’re just getting started.
At this moment, numerous companies, including the big names in technology, are working to create audio devices that can be controlled with their voice. It remains to be seen which company will win it, even if Amazon has created a series of inexpensive products with a set of not bad features, making them the best sellers in this niche market.
In the meantime, there are many products that we are waiting for, especially in Italy:
Smart Speaker Spotify
Some smart speakers allow you to enable music playback from a Spotify account, but this does not mean that the popular streaming service cannot create a device of its own and compete with the big names in technology.
According to some rumors, Spotify is working intensely on voice search, even if it has not managed to create a real assistant like Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri.
Samsung Galaxy Home Smart Speaker
Although the technical characteristics are unknown, Samsung has made the Galaxy Home official: its smart speaker competes with the Apple HomePod. The features announced at the Unpacked 2018 event are very high audio quality, the integration of various artificial intelligence, and compatibility with the Bixby assistant.
At the moment, we don’t know a price or release date, even if we imagine it works with Samsung’s SmartThings ecosystem.
What Are Smart Speakers For?
Mostly, what are smart speakers for? what are their applications in daily life?
By interacting vocally with a voice assistant, you can ask to listen to your favorite music. It’s simple, ask: ” Hey Siri, let me listen to Pink Floyd. ” In the kitchen, it can be useful, for example, to set timers or to activate a reminder.
There are many applications for smart speakers: it is possible to control the switching on and off of an appliance or to control the lighting and temperature of a specific room.
