This is the review of the comparison between two smart speakers from two different brands that are popular in the market. The comparison here is between the JBL Link Portable and the Sonos One. To know which one is better than the other, go to the detailed review.

JBL Link Portable	Sonos One
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Solid audio performance. Packed with features. Combines portable use with Google Assistant for convenient smart home management.	Alexa integrations work almost exactly the same as in the Echo. The Sonos One speakers sound amazing for their size. Can be used to create a stereo pair. Google Assistant, and Apple AirPlay 2 support.
CONS	CONS
We miss dynamics and control, it gets pretty tame. No JBL Connect support. No aux input.	Voice controls don’t support Spotify. Connecting Alexa and the Sonos One was a bit more involved than I’d like. No Bluetooth or analog audio input.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

JBL Link Portable

The JBL Link portable is one of those speakers from JBL that sounds really good even after being a smart speaker as this speaker has a built-in Google Assistant. This speaker is retailing for around a hundred and eighty dollars currently on JBL’s own website. The price on this may be on the higher side but it worth that price range.

Sonos One

When Sonos announced the Sonos One speaker really caught my eye because they’re known for really good sound quality, multi-room speaker setups, and Amazon Alexa, they’re promising AirPlay 2 and they’re also promising Google Assistant support which means I’ll have all three main services off of One speaker. So for a relatively small investment of about $200 per speaker which is also one of those affordable speakers you can buy, you’re not locked into one ecosystem.

DESIGN: 

JBL Link Portable

As far as the design of this speaker, this speaker almost looks the like other Link speakers such as the Link 20 and 10 but the size on this different. This speaker is in a cylindrical shape and covered by some type of cloth. The top of the speaker has one button at the center that activated the Google Assistant on pressing and holding it for around two seconds and pressing it shorty will play and pauses your music. Also on the top of the speaker, there are two buttons for volume up and down. There are also two microphones built-in on the top f the speaker so that the Google Assistant can hear properly. On the back of the speaker, you have the Bluetooth button, mic mute button, power button, battery panel, and charging port. At the bottom of the speaker, you have the point for wireless charging.

Sonos One

The Sonos One is available in two different colors one is black and another one is white. As far as the design of this speaker, this speaker designed on the basis of the Sonos Play 1, and also, there are many improvements made on the Play 1 to make this speaker. As far as the build these speaker is really well built and the speaker is covered by grills all over the sides of the speaker. This speaker has six built-in microphones that work great for your voice assistants which you can use also to control playback. On the top of the speaker, you have a touch-sensitive surface that forwards and backward the track on swiping right or left. Tapping on the center of the surface of the touch panel play and pauses your track and tapping left and right increases and decreases the volume.

FEATURES:

JBL Link Portable

This speaker comes in a nicely packed box and inside the box, you get the actual speaker, the USB Type-C charging cable, the charging dock, and some documentation that includes the quick start-up guide, and warranty information, etc. As far as the features, this speaker is IPX7 rated which means this speaker is submerged in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes and it will work well. This speaker also has a built-in Google Assistant that helps in making your home a smart home.

This speaker features eight hours of playtime and it takes only three and half hours to charge the speaker fully from zero percentage of charge. As this uses USB Type-C for charging it supports fast charging. As far as the charging process, this speaker can be charged in two ways. One is you can directly connect the USB-C cable into the charging port there on the back of the speaker. Another way of charging is using the charging dock. For this, you have to plug the USB-C cable into to charging dock and the other end f the cable into a charging brick. Then you have to place the speaker in the dock and you are done. As the dock is of square shape there is no specific position to place the speaker, so that’s a pretty easy way of charging the speaker.

This speaker uses an app called the Google Home app and once the app opens up, we have a couple of options. We can first go up to that little plus button it’s on the top left corner or as you can see Google has recognized that the speaker is trying to connect via Bluetooth, and it’s going to give us that little quick option underneath the home button. Then we need to turn on our Wi-Fi, so once Wi-Fi is turned on it’s gonna start looking for devices that are connected to that same network then you will see it’s found the JBL Link Portable. That’s the speaker when it gets connected, you are gonna go ahead and click on that and this will take just a moment for us to connect.

Then you will hear a little chime sound that comes out of the speaker but once you do just go ahead and click that yes button. Then we’re gonna assign this device to a specific room in our home in this case it’s in our living room, and then we’re going to connect the speaker directly to our Wi-Fi network. So the Link Portable will connect to our Wi-Fi network and this will be able to independently give us Google assistant access.

Sonos One

Setting up this Sonos One is a pretty straightforward affair, I mean you take it out of the box you plug it into an outlet you load the Sonos app on your phone, and you just follow the on-screen instructions. This is something where Sonos has had a decade of experience doing this so they’ve really refined this setup process inside the application and it is brain-dead simple, it’s I would feel very comfortable giving my parents this and having them set it up on their own, it’s really really straightforward. However, where things kind of start to fall a little bit is the handshake between the Sonos app and the Amazon app. This is where things could potentially go wrong on you because you’ve finished setting up the Sonos speaker itself then it kicks you over to the Amazon app which has you log in to your Amazon account give it permission for Sonos to use it links the to and then is supposed to kick you back to the Sonos app.

In one of the setup processes, when I first set this up it didn’t kick me back to the Sonos app, and when I went back to the Sonos app it didn’t properly authenticate between the two, so I had to go through the process a second time. So this is where for me kind of falls short and it would I would not feel comfortable giving this to my parents to set up the Amazon portion of this because if you’re not tech-savvy and something goes sideways on you, you might end up getting kind of lost in having a call tech support or in my case my parents calling me.

To get the best sound quality from your Sonos speaker, you need to run through what they call Trueplay inside the Sonos app. So what that does is it plays a tone out of your Sonos speaker and you walk around the room waving your hand up and down to the air walking in a big circle around the entire perimeter of the room again and again for about 30 seconds and it calibrates the EQ and the different settings of your speaker to make it sound as good as it possibly can from that spot and it works quite well.

SOUND QUALITY:

JBL Link Portable

As far as the sound quality of the speaker, it is pretty good. The instruments in the midrange sound and their positioning are well articulated, the detail and clarity are also excellent, especially the main instruments, but the background instrument and the track positioning are quite off on this speaker. But the output of each frequency range on this speaker still sounds great, and each frequency range can stand out with some nice detail preservation and never really sound compressed.

Sonos One

Once you have the true play process complete it sounds really great, I would put this as a middle-of-the-road speaker, it’s not too bassier or boomy, its treble isn’t too harsh or tinny it’s got a really just nice flat down the middle response. So, it plays well for pretty much any kind of music you throw at it. It’s gonna sound good with classical, it’s gonna sound good with rock, it just works across the board, it’s a really well-rounded speaker. If you’re somebody that prefers more boomy bass like a really good kick, if you enjoy Beats headphones, this is probably not the speaker for you. If that’s what you prefer I’d probably direct you more towards the Google Home Max which has a reputation for being very bass-heavy and is really kind of like room-filling sound.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

In my opinion, the Sonos One is better than the JBL Link Portable because the Sonos One speaker is a phenomenal device, it has really good sound quality, it’s going to be the only smart speaker that you can buy that is cross-platform. Every other smart speaker that you’re going to get is going to be for one assistant only. So if you’re looking for something that’s going to allow you to experiment with different services, the Sonos One is the one to get.

Expert Reviews of JBL Link Portable:

By PC Mag
The JBL Link Portable speaker offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity along with AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and hands-free Google Assistant support in a waterproof design with solid audio performance for its size.

By What Hi-Fi?
For a great, affordable, durable home smart speaker, you’ll be hard-pushed to find a product that can match JBL’s Link Portable

By Pocket-Lint
The JBL Link Portable is a lovely, compact speaker that’s a perfect size for delivering decent sound (from what we have heard so far), whilst…

By LB Tech Reviews
JBL Link Portable is both a portable speaker and a smart speaker. It is easy to use and the sound is perfectly OK. But you pay extra for…

Expert Reviews of Sonos One:

By What Hi-Fi?
While we still hope that Sonos has a change of heart and adds hi-res support in the near future, we don’t believe its absence…

By Digital Trends
Yes. If you want all the convenience of Alexa (and Google Assistant coming soon), along with Sonos’ intuitive system and excellent sound quality, the Sonos One remains one of the best you can…

By Pocket-lint
The Sonos One is a small but mighty little speaker. It delivers a premium, solid design, just as you would expect from a Sonos device, but…

By CGM
When the Amazon Echo first launched, it was a game-changer for the industry. It ushered in voice assistants into the home, in a…