Welcome to Unofficial JBL Month here at CNET. Through sheer coincidence, I've had deals crop up on the JBL Link 10, JBL Link 500 (still available, by the way) and JBL Boost TV, all within the last 10 days or so. So just to finish off October in style, here's one more: For a limited time, and while supplies last, Daily Steals has the JBL Link 20 portable wireless voice-activated speaker for $59.99. The Link 20 is the big brother to the smaller Link 10 I wrote about last week and offers a similarly dazzling array of features: It's portable, waterproof and wireless times two (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). It has built-in Google Assistant.

Some weeks, there are so many tall-skinny cylinders sitting around my apartment you might think I spend my time as a wizard in The Cones of Dunshire. The job of a WIRED Gear reviewer does not include making civilizations to collect cones. It does involve testing a ton of can-shaped portable speakers. The JBL Link 20 is one my favorites, and it's half off through April 27. Usually speakers come in, and I test them, and then they leave my cluttered life.

The Amazon Echo kicked off the smart speaker trend a few years ago, but it's no longer alone. There are dozens of smart speakers already on the market in 2018 and a ton more are coming. You need to decide which voice assistant you prefer (there are now four--Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and Cortana) and what features are most important to you. Does it need to play Spotify? Does it need to connect to your other speakers and smarthome gadgets?