Sonos.

Whatever you do, don’t buy a Sonos speaker unless you’re absolutely sure it’ll remain in the exact same location, on the same exact wifi hotspot, in the same house forever.

I had a Sonos One speaker in our master bathroom back in Chicago for years. I enjoyed listening to news, podcasts, music, etc. while doing the things one does in the bathroom. It rarely faltered. I had a choice between Amazon and Google as my home assistant; Alexa worked fairly well.

And then we moved to Tucson.

I installed the Sonos One speaker in the master bathroom once again and tried to go through the necessary steps to join the new wifi hot spot in the new house.

Oh my god.

After the eight hard/factory reset of the device I decided to just give up. I gave the Sonos One to Chris (who was a couple that he’s been dealing with in a similar manner) and went ahead and ordered a HomePod Mini.

The HomePod Mini is installed and was setup and running in less than five minutes. I still don’t get the hate directed at Siri or Apple’s HomeKit, our experiences in both Chicago and now Tucson have been flawless. The HomePod Mini has surprisingly robust sound and I’m quite pleased with its performance.

I like it when It Just Works.