The Best Smart Speakers of 2025

Smart speakers are more than just gadgets that allow you to listen to music, play a nightly game of Jeopardy, or turn on a light. These functional smart devices can also automatically adjust your thermostat, help you manage your calendar, shop for you, detect falls, and alert you to potential intruders in your home. In fact, they have become an integral part of any smart home.

We've tested the market’s best-performing and most popular smart speakers, including, but not limited to, the best Alexa smart speakers to learn which ones have the strongest blend of smart home features, audio quality, and usability.

We recommend the Amazon Echo (4th gen) (available at Amazon for $99.99) as the best smart speaker you can buy. It features quick, responsive Alexa functionality, includes support for Zigbee and Matter smart homes, and it features built-in motion and temperature sensors.

A lesser-known smart speaker, the Sonos Era 300 (available at Amazon) is our choice for the best portable speaker with the best sound and is the first spatial audio offering from Sonos. Each smart speaker on this list has something distinctive to offer.

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Other Smart Speakers We Tested

What To Consider When Buying Smart Speakers

Who would use this?

Before you buy one, it’s crucial to consider who will use the smart speaker. If you already use one of the major smart home ecosystems, like Alexa, Google Home, or Apple HomeKit, you'll want a smart speaker that integrates with those devices.

Likewise, if you care a lot about audio quality, it's worth focusing on one of the smart speakers that puts importance there, but if sound isn’t a priority, a smaller and cheaper device will still let you control your digital assistant and listen to music as needed.

Key features

• Voice assistant: If you already have smart speakers in your home and use features like Alexa’s Announcement and Drop-In, Google Assistant's Broadcast, or speaker-to-speaker calling to communicate, you will probably want to go with an actual Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker. Third-party brands with Alexa or Google Assistant built in can certainly have their strengths, but they don’t all feature the same communication capabilities as their first-party counterparts. This seems to be more of an issue with Alexa devices than Google Assistant ones. If you don't plan to use your speaker this way, it doesn’t matter which brand you choose. Still, using the speaker to announce or broadcast a message can be life-changing if you have kids ("Dinner's ready!"), or if you realize too late that there's only a single square of toilet paper left and need to call for help from the bathroom.
• Sound quality: Most people want a smart speaker they can listen to music on, but don’t necessarily care about sound quality. If you can tell the difference between a cheap speaker and a more expensive one, you'll want to spend a bit more on a smart speaker that offers deeper bass and crisp high-end detail, ensuring your music sounds its absolute best.
• Design: Your smart speaker will be in your home, and you'll want something that looks good among other devices and your aesthetic. Some smart speakers have a more premium design than others, but generally speaking, the major brands’ speakers blend in. Ultimately, design is subjective, so you'll have to figure out what you like.
• Connectivity: Smart speakers connect to the wider internet over Wi-Fi, allowing them to directly access your preferred music streaming service and control smart home devices. Some, however, also use Bluetooth, which can make it easier to quickly connect temporary devices, like the phone of a houseguest. Some smart speakers still have 3.5mm audio inputs or other physical connectivity, though those tend to be the more expensive ones.
• Smart home integration: Smart home integration comes in a few different forms. For starters, most smart speakers with digital assistants use either Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. If you already use one of these digital assistants, it's worth ensuring that your new smart speaker also does so that you can maintain consistency and ease of use. Additionally, you'll want to consider all the smart home devices you have in your home and whether you need a smart home hub to unite them. Smart home hubs serve as the bridge between the wider internet and your smart home and have the necessary hardware to connect to smart home devices through standards like Zigbee, Matter, Thread, and more. If you have devices that connect through these standards and don't already have a smart home hub, or plan on replacing your existing smart home hub with your new smart speaker, consider the connectivity you need.
• Privacy: If you're researching smart speakers, bringing an ever-listening, Wi-Fi-connected device into your home might (should!) be a concern. We know that Amazon and Google review and store voice recordings to improve smart assistant accuracy, and there have been instances when Alexa and Google Assistant have misheard commands, leading to invasions of privacy. That being said, there are steps you can take to protect your privacy from Alexa and Google Assistant. You'll want to pay attention to the setup process in the speaker's associated app, as you'll get the chance to opt out of voice recording storage and review. You can also hop into the settings later to delete voice recordings and adjust other privacy options.

Care, maintenance, and warranty

Non-portable smart speakers are designed to be kept largely in place in a dry environment. Some can handle the odd splash or two if placed in the kitchen, but keep them as far away from water as possible. You usually don't have to perform regular maintenance on a smart speaker, but it's worth ensuring that your smart speaker has some kind of warranty when you buy it, even though that warranty will likely only cover manufacturer defects present right out of the box. In other words, if you damage your smart speaker, you're likely out of luck.

FAQ: What To Know About Smart Speakers

What are smart speakers, and how do they work?

Smart speakers are small audio speakers with a built-in digital assistant like Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. At their core, they can be used to listen to music, but on top of that, they can control smart home devices, access information from the web, add items to your to-do list or shopping list, and more.

For the most part, the digital assistants on smart speakers can do just as much as those on your smartphone, except for phone-specific tasks like controlling your phone's settings.

Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant: Who is talking to me?

Alexa is the most popular smart assistant out there. In our experience, it’s the fastest performer, and it can control the most devices. However, choosing a smart assistant ultimately comes down to personal preference and what other smart home devices you already own (or plan to have).

Those committed to Apple's ecosystem will be attracted to the Apple HomePods’ solid sound quality and built-in Siri. Unfortunately, Apple’s proprietary approach to technology has made it difficult for smart home companies to make their products compatible with Apple’s HomeKit smart devices platform. You can technically run an entire smart home through Siri—you just don’t have a lot of options.

If you're just new to smart home technology, we recommend investing in an Alexa smart speaker or one that uses Google Assistant rather than Siri.

Why You Should Trust Our Expertise

We’ve worked with, lived with, and loved each of the smart speakers included in this guide. However, they all have different strengths and intentions, so settling on testing criteria was difficult. We focused on the speaker’s ability to be useful in a smart home setting and its mass appeal. As far as audio quality goes, while some are better than others, most of the speakers we tested will perform just fine in the average home.

What Other Reviewers Are Saying About the Best Smart Speakers

Experts are split on what makes the best smart speaker overall, but this largely comes down to different product recommendation approaches. Some competitive pubs don't award one single product the best overall, instead, they’ve split up the winners into categories. Other pubs prefer versatility and audio quality over smart home compatibility. To save you some time sorting through that mess, we've rounded up some of the opinions below.

• CNET: CNET calls the Amazon Echo (4th Gen) the best smart speaker overall, thanks to its solid audio quality and Alexa support at a reasonable price.
• Wirecutter: The folks at Wirecutter split things into categories rather than awarding one smart speaker the best overall. The smaller Amazon Echo Dot gets the pick for best smart speaker for beginners, while the Echo Studio is hailed as the best for music.
• Wired names the Sonos Era 100 as the best smart speaker overall thanks to its great audio quality, its price, and its Alexa support.

What Owners Are Saying About Our Best Smart Speaker

Generally speaking, reviews of the Amazon Echo are excellent, with users impressed with the speaker's audio quality for the price.

• Amazon: The Echo has a 4.6-star average on Amazon, and reviewers note that the speaker delivers great audio for a variety of different genres. One review notes that the speaker is "easy to set up, easy to use, responsive, sounds good, portable, and looks good."
• Best Buy: has an average rating that’s even better—4.8 stars. One reviewer mentions they "like the sound and home hub ability so much that this speaker is my second Echo in my house."

Read More About the Smart Home on Reviewed

• The Best Smart Displays
• The Best Smart Bulbs
• 8 Ways to Protect Your Privacy from Alexa
• Everything You Need to Turn Your House into a Smart Home
• The Best Smart Thermostats
• What is Matter and what does it mean for smart homes