Bose challenges Sonos with new Alexa-powered smart speaker and soundbars

Bose has just announced a $400 home smart speaker and two soundbars that will be available in October. All three products will ship with Alexa voice support, with “other voice assistants to follow” according to the company. Each has an eight-microphone array for far-field voice recognition. AirPlay 2 functionality will be added in early 2019.
The Bose Home Speaker 500 has quite a look to it. (I’m not yet picking a side as to whether it’s nice or ugly.) I do know that the