My wife wants to be able to stream Spotify to a nice speaker for home listening. Was going to buy a bluetooth speaker, but then realised some smart speakers are about the same price so might as well get one of them and have the convenience of a voice controlled personal assistant as well.

Been doing a bit of research but finding the decision quite complex because:

1. It's difficult to know what is actually available in NZ (hardware and services).

2. Many reviews are not up to date and the landscape is changing so quickly.

Considering things like: Apple Homepod, Amazone Echo, Sonos One. Or Google options?

From what I've seen most smart speakers (like Echo) have really poor quality sound. Seeing as our primary use will be for music, that makes me hesitant to go with something like Echo, despite its good price and Alexa is excellent.

We are an Apple household for most other deices, however we do not use Apple music. Apple Homepod's limitation of only supporting voice controls for Apple music is off-putting when all the other will work natively with Spotify. Also Siri seems to be a distant 3rd place behind Alexa and Google on the personal assistant side. Apple of course is also astronomically expensive compared to the others, but appears to offer superior sound quality. If it was not for the limitation of being tied into Apple music, I might consider shelling out for the audio quality, but I'm seeing too many downsides to justify that price.

Sonos One appears to be a good middle ground? Attempting to be platform agnostic although I understand it's Alexa based for not but may be adding more Google and Apple support in the future? Sonos One seems to have better sound quality, although not as good as Homepod.

Would really appreciate advice on what smart speaker to buy in the current mid-2018 landscape. Whether it's one of the above or something I have not yet considered. Thanks!