The days that Smart speakers and Smart homes were popular are now gone. The ones replacing these are Voice assistant types of hardware that can help you edit your shopping list, remind you of the events you have to attend, and make your life more comfortable overall.
The question that sits on everyone’s lips is, which is best on the market right now. The more popular these days are Google Home and Amazon Echo. In this article, we will detail the things these can or can’t do.
These Virtual Assistant speakers can understand your commands and act accordingly. Activating them is no hard task at all, providing hands-free activation through voice recognition.
Google Home has been released in 2016 and features smart home assistance and entertainment elements to help you do your house choirs, make plans, have fun listening to music, and so on.
Google Home’s rival is called Amazon Echo that shares almost all the characteristics, although it has been released earlier than the Home, in 2014.
Voice Assistance
Activating the two will be made through voice commands, some of them being: “Amazon,” “ALEXA,” and a full command will go something like this: “Echo! Dim the lights off”.
Both of them have voice commands, although Google Home seems to get things done with even fewer words spoken, compared with ALEXA that requires a proper combination of words for it to work. ALEXA is better at handling shopping-related tasks than Google Home.
Both of them are extraordinary and provide top-notch quality services, but Google Assistant will take it further. You can ask Google Assistant: “What was the leading actor on F.R.I.E.N.D.S ?” and you can go even further with that like: “What other shows has he starred in ?”.
Smart Home Features
The home features will include locking the doors, setting the ambient temperature, and both of them have these features.
Google Home will make a good combination with Nest thermostats and WeMo-friendly lights. You can also connect it to your doors, TV’s and other smart devices.
The same features are included in Amazon Echo’s kit, but the variety of devices that ALEXA cant connect to is broader than Google’s. ALEXA can connect with 60.000 devices from 7,400 brands worldwide, in comparison with 10,000 that Google supports.
Music and Audio
For the entry-level devices, such as Google Home or Amazon Dot, the better choice will be Google Home Mini because the sound quality on it outperforms the one on Echo’s Dot. The best speaker is on Echo Spot, and the more influential will be Echo Plus compared to the standard Echo and Google Mini and Max.
Both of the devices allow you to connect to different platforms, such as Spotify, TuneIn, iTunes, iHeartRadio. Furthermore, Amazon supports Amazon Music, and on Google, you can access Google Play Music and YouTube Red.
Google Home now also lets you upload your own music library, this feature missing on Amazon Echo.
Pricing
- Google Home: $49-$149
- Google Home Mini: $49
- Google Home Max: $99
- Google Home Hub: $149
- Amazon Echo: $55-$165
- Amazon Echo Dot: $55
- Amazon Echo Plus: $165
Seeing the capabilities of each device you’ve already made your mind on which is the best for your every-day use. Both devices share similarities, and both of them are very good for the task at hand, you will need to find which is best for your needs.
Frances might be just at the beginning of her career, but after attending a technical school, she has a fresh perspective on today’s technology. She contributes to the site with tech news.
Leave a Reply