Sonos has announced a smart version of its Play:1 speaker at an event in New York on 4 October, featuring integrated Alexa voice control but with other assistants, like Google and Cortana, also in the pipeline to join at a later date. It will also support Apple's AirPlay 2 from next year.

The smart speaker, which goes by the name Sonos One, has been a long time coming after the company's CEO Patrick Spence teased it was on the way in January 2017. It launches alongside an update to existing Sonos speakers which brings voice control through Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, though the Sonos One will also act as an Amazon Echo too.

The Sonos One features a similar design to the Play:1 but with a few refinements including the addition of six far-field microphones, like Amazon's Echo features, along with a new control pad at the top of the speaker.

Rather than the physical buttons found on the Play:1, the Sonos One has capacitive touch buttons, similar to the Play:5 that launched in September 2015 and the Playbase that launched in February 2017.

The capacitive touch controls sit on a flat top rather than indented like the original Play:1 and they come in the form of Play/Pause, next and previous, as well as a number of dots forming a circle around the Play/Pause button, lighting up when the speaker is listening.

As you would expect from a Sonos speaker, the One can be seamlessly added to existing Sonos speakers for a multi-room experience, or it will work independently. Like all Sonos speakers, it connects to the Sonos app, which is available for iOS and Android devices, as well as Macs and PCs, and it is compatible with a huge number of streaming services.

The Sonos One will be available for pre-order from 4 October, delivery from 24 October, and it will cost £199/$199/€229, which is the same as the original Play:1. The update to existing Sonos speakers allowing them to be controlled through Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will be available as an over-the-air update in beta form from 4 October.

Google Assistant will be coming to the Sonos One from 2018.