6 Top-Rated Smart Speakers For 2025

Many people are looking to have a more technologically connected life. They want their smartphone to connect to their watch, their TV, their light bulbs, and more. Smart devices are beginning to dominate how we run our lives, and while the smartphone is certainly the most emblematic of that fact, there is no greater hub of all of these interconnections than a smart speaker. Whether you want to know what the temperature is outside, play your favorite song, or remember who that actor was in that movie you saw six years ago, a smart speaker is able to sit in your room and provide all the entertainment and information you could possibly want. 

People have their preferred smart device services, like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, but there are so many different smart speakers that can use these services that it can be a bit overwhelming to decide which one is the best fit for your home. We are here to hopefully make that purchasing process a little easier. By looking at the reviews and ratings of actual customers, we are going to spotlight six different smart speakers that cover a range of services, sound qualities, sizes, and prices that these customers have shown to be big fans of, so they may be the right smart speaker for you.

For those who are interested in using Alexa, the most basic smart speaker you can get is the Amazon Echo. The Echo has many different variations, but the classic Echo is still the most versatile and easy-to-please option on the table. Currently, the Echo is in its fourth generation and can do just about everything you would want from a smart speaker.

Although this is an Amazon product, you are not beholden to solely using Amazon services with the Echo, though Alexa is the only voice assistant that it supports. For music, you can use Amazon Music, but if you want to use Apple Music, Spotify, Sirius XM, and other service, you can do that. In the case of some of these music services, it supports HD lossless audio, which makes for a more premium audio experience. With the Alexa service, you can control everything from your lights to your door locks if you have established a smart home setup with things like Zigbee or Matter, and if you know someone with their own Alexa-powered device, you can call them.

Customers on Amazon have given the Echo an overall average of 4.7 out of 5 stars. This is thanks to nearly 150,000 different people rating the smart speaker, and 80% of those ratings are the full five stars. The Amazon Echo sells for $100, and you have three different colors to choose from to best fit your home decor.

For some people, having just an audio device can be quite limiting. They need to have a visual component for their smart speaker to get the most out of it. For instance, they want to be able to connect to their home's security cameras and see what is happening. Instead of making audio calls to their friends and families, they want to make video calls instead. Some people want the benefits of a smart home hub but are deaf or hard of hearing, requiring some kind of visual component to operate everything. Well, the Amazon Echo family can accommodate this with a few different devices, but the one that will work for most people would be the Amazon Echo Show 10.

Right off the bat, this can do everything that the classic Amazon Echo mentioned above can do, but it has plenty more features that are exclusive to the 10.1-inch screen. These include access to streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video. For the home chefs out there, you can be treated to daily recipes. You can have your photos displayed on the screen with Amazon Photos.

These extra features and screen do mean the price is increased to $250, but with a 4.5 out of 5 average star rating from over 50,000 Amazon customers, it shows (no pun intended) that it is more than worth the price.

Most people just want to have a handy smart speaker in their home that can make their life just a little bit easier. However, a smart speaker is still a speaker, and audio quality is still very important, especially if you frequently listen to music. While the regular Echo models have fine audio quality, they are not capable of Dolby Atmos or spatial audio. The Amazon Echo Studio is built for sound quality and supports premium audio formats.

Rather than just being one speaker, the Echo Studio is actually five speakers built into the same device. This is how it can deliver the most dynamic audio you can expect from an Amazon Echo. Plus, it has adaptive audio and can adjust its levels to best fit the room the speaker is in. Beyond its audio quality, it does everything else you would expect from an Echo. It's powered by Alexa, can connect to any of your favorite music streaming services, give voice commands for your smart home, and more. The premium you are paying for is the audio quality, which increases the price to $200.

Like with the Echo Show 10, the Amazon Echo Studio has earned a 4.5 out of 5 star average from over 42,000 customer ratings.

Not everybody is interested in a smart speaker that runs on Amazon's Alexa service. Instead, they may be more interested in utilizing Google Assistant. After all, Google works with devices from your television to your car. All of it can be connected through Google Home, which works with Google's own products released under the Google Nest brand. Nest products include door locks, security cameras, streaming devices, smoke alarms, and, yes, smart speakers.

The Google Nest Audio works much in the same way as the Amazon Echo, and it has the same sticker price at $100 if you buy it from Google. Amazon sells it for $69, though you only get two color options there. You can use Google Assistant for voice tasks and connect to a good number of streaming audio services. A great feature is the ability to put the Nest Audio in guest mode. That way, people using the speaker at your home can't access your personal information. You can also easily delete your vocal prompt history for Google Assistant.

Customers on Amazon have given the Google Nest Audio an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. The Nest Mini is also a great option, but for the more robust audio quality, go with the Nest Audio.

While some people have been entirely consumed by the Google ecosystem, others have instead immersed themselves in what Apple has to offer. They have iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and Apple Music, enjoying how all of their devices are seamlessly connected. You can add an Apple-branded smart speaker to this ecosystem with the Apple HomePod Mini. This speaker has a very similar spherical shape to the Amazon Echo, and it performs all the same tasks that device does as well, from playing your music to voice controlling your smart home. The major difference is that it utilizes Apple's Siri voice assistant service rather than Alexa. Also, this is the miniature version of the standard HomePod, so it measures just 3.3 inches tall, allowing it to stay out of sight. That being said, you can still tailor it to your home decor because there are five different color options for the HomePod Mini to choose from.

The difference between this mini version and the standard HomePod comes down to two things: the size and audio quality. If audio quality is incredibly important to you, that means you are going to need to shell out $299 for the full-size HomePod, which might be out of many people's price range for a speaker like this. The HomePod Mini, on the other hand, costs just $99. You can also pair HomePod Mini speakers together for a stereo sound, among other fun, lesser-known features. 

While all the smart speakers above are great, they are not necessarily the favorites of true-blue audiophiles, with the possible exception of the Amazon Echo Studio. For the people who want fidelity over everything else, they need to look to a company like Sonos for its smart speaker, the Sonos Era 100. In practice, this smart speaker works much in the same way as the other speakers mentioned above. There are two voice services built into the speaker: Sonos' own voice control and Alexa. Both services can do things like play your music, answer questions, and set timers, but if you want to use the speaker to control your smart home devices, you need Alexa for that. Unfortunately, the Sonos Era 100 does not have the capabilities to make calls, so that is one feature you lose.

What you gain, though, is audio quality. This is a speaker designed for stereo listening, and because it is a Sonos, you can specifically adapt the sound of the speaker to the room you are in with the Sonos app for the best, full sound possible. You can also work the speaker into a full Sonos surround sound system if you wish. Plus, it has the option for you to plug in analog devices like turntables, so you don't just have to listen to streamed music. At $249, it is the priciest option on this list, but with Amazon customers rating it 4 out of 5 stars on average, it very well could be perfectly right for you.

There are so many different smart speakers on the market. One company can make many variations of its speaker to accommodate anyone's specific needs and desires, so whittling this list down to just six speakers came down to a number of factors. First and foremost, the customers who actually purchased these speakers needed to like the product. This is why customer reviews on Amazon were a majorly important part of narrowing down this list. When the opinions of customers were hard to come by, the opinions of reviewers were considered from sources such as the New York Times, Rtings.com, Forbes, and here at SlashGear.

Once the positive opinions were factored in, various options needed to be represented. This meant that these speakers had to use different voice assistants to best fit a person's needs, have different sizes, different audio qualities, and cover a decently wide price range to accommodate people's budgets. Pairing these factors with the customer opinions, these six smart speakers were selected.