Smart speakers are great. Simple to connect, easy to use, and perhaps more so than any other smart device, convenient. In the long run, however, you’ll soon run into a problem — they go out of date. While the audio hardware inside is perfectly serviceable for a long time, the computer-like bits inside, just like your iPhone or your MacBook, will go out of date and soon become obsolete – eventually leaving you with perfectly good sound equipment that can no longer be used because the company that made it didn’t want to keep the app going, or the standard it once supported has been updated to the point of leaving it behind.
On the other end of the spectrum is a Hi-Fi setup. While a modern system is at least connected to the internet in some way, there is a certain degree of inconvenience that comes with a pair of generally quite large passive speakers, an amp, and a separate streaming box. The bonuses come with the ability to upgrade your components, from the speakers to the streamer to the audio processor — and most Hi-Fi stuff is built to last. It was only a couple of months ago that I finally removed my CD player from the eighties, and one of my most used sets of speakers is over 10 years old.
