Smart speakers have become the ultimate multitaskers for your home, combining great sound with the convenience of voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. Whether you're streaming your favorite playlists, checking the weather, controlling your smart home devices or setting reminders hands free, a good smart speaker can make your day-to-day life a whole lot easier -- and more fun, too. If you're an audiophile, some models prioritize high-quality sound that can fill a room. If you're on a budget, there are plenty of affordable options that still pack in tons of features. And if you're deep into the smart home ecosystem, finding a speaker that seamlessly connects to your devices will be a game-changer. We've picked out the best smart speakers for every need, whether you're after booming bass, a sleek design or advanced voice assistant capabilities.

Sonos's top-class battery-powered wifi and Bluetooth speaker has been given an all-round upgrade with double the battery life, impressive stereo sound and new touch controls. The Move 2 is certainly not your average portable speaker. It costs £449 (€499/$449/A$799) and aims to be the only sound system you need for indoor and outdoor use, weighing 3kg and sized about the same as a traditional bookshelf speaker. In essence it is the same as its stablemate the Era 100 but with a battery on the bottom so it can be moved from room to room, out into the garden or taken in a car. Like the original from 2020, the Sonos blows away practically every rival that isn't a giant boom box once you crank up the tunes, and even tops its mains-powered sibling.

Voice assistants are everywhere now – on your phone, in your TV, possibly even in your kitchen appliances. But one of the most common ways that people interact with Siri, Alexa and the Google Assistant is through a smart speaker, and there are now a wide variety of such devices available at a wide variety of price points. There are downsides to having a smart home device that's always listening for a wake word, as giving more personal information to Amazon, Apple and Google can be a questionable decision. That said, all these companies have made it easier to manage how your data is used -- you can opt out of humans reviewing some of your voice queries, and it's also less complicated to manage and erase your history with various digital assistants, too. The good news is that there's never been a better time to get a smart speaker, particularly if you're a music fan. For all their benefits, the original Amazon Echo and Google Home devices did not sound good. Sonos, on the other hand, made great sounding WiFi-connected speakers, but they lacked any voice-controlled smarts. Sonos released its own voice assistant in 2022 and also supports Alexa on its latest speakers.

The Era 300 is the second in Sonos's next-generation line of wifi hi-fis, packing six speakers into one curvaceous box capable of immersing listeners in quality sound. The speaker costs £449 ($449/A$749) and sits above the new £249 Era 100, competing directly with Apple's HomePod and other high-end speakers – premium audio at a premium price. But where the Era 100 is a compact bookshelf speaker, the Era 300 is a different animal. It needs to sit out in the open to allow it to project music outwards from its front, sides and top to fill the room with sound. The cinched-in design allows a series of speakers to fire up and out to the sides from the back half of the Era 300, projecting sound all around the listener for full stereo and new spatial audio surround sound.

The Era 100 is the first of a brand new line of wifi speakers from multi-room audio specialists Sonos, taking what was good about its popular longstanding One series and adding more bass and stereo sound. With a similar aesthetic to the outgoing One, it is only 2cm taller and 1cm deeper, making it pretty compact and easy to place on a cabinet or bookshelf. It requires just a power cable, connecting to your router via wifi 6 for streaming music from more than 100 different services, including Spotify and BBC Sounds, controlled from the Sonos app on your phone. In a first for Sonos's non-portable speakers, it also supports Bluetooth 5 for impromptu streaming from guest's phones or other Bluetooth devices, which works great. A button on the top turns the voice assistant on or off.

If you pay attention to the music industry, you've probably heard about spatial audio. The promise is that music will envelop the user from all directions without needing a room full of speakers to achieve the effect. Apple has pushed it a lot in the last few years, in Apple Music, its line of AirPods headphones and the latest HomePod speaker. Amazon's streaming service also offers spatial audio, and its Echo Studio speaker can play back compatible tracks. Sonos has been paying attention, as well – its recent Arc and Beam soundbars support Dolby Atmos for movies, and now the company is releasing its first music speaker designed for spatial audio, the Era 300.

Of the two speakers Sonos announced earlier this month, the Era 100 is much easier to sum up: it's a replacement for the Sonos One, which was first introduced in 2017. Unlike the Era 300, there's no need to ponder the value of spatial audio; the Era 100 is a relatively straightforward mono speaker, just like the One and the Play:1 before it. Don't let that simple description deceive you, though – the $250 Era 100 is a complete redesign, inside and out, and the end result is a worthy upgrade and a very versatile speaker. At first glance, the Era 100 looks quite similar to the One, but upon further examination you'll notice a number of small but meaningful changes. That starts with the vertically-oriented Sonos logo that you'll find on most of their other speakers like the Roam and, naturally, the Era 300.

I've never really admired Sonos' speakers for their actual sound quality. But the main draw of a Sonos speaker is the technology behind the grill. Boasting integrations with Alexa, Apple, Google, and virtually every music streaming service worth mentioning, the multiroom-capable system is the most convenient way to listen to everything, everywhere, all at once. With the new Era 100, Sonos finally wipes the floor with competitors when it comes to sound quality too. With stereo tweeters and a more advanced room tuning feature, this is a single speaker that easily holds its own with everything but more expensive two-speaker systems.