Polk Assist Smart Speaker – Review – a google assistant with a little muscle.

Google provided brains for his virtual badistant at home, and now Polk gives him muscle. Announced in May, the Polk Assist (see on Newegg) takes the very competent Google badistant and the couple with the audio expertise for which the company is known, creating what is essentially a speaker smart Google powerful. This model is not intended to compete with the larger and more expensive Google Home Max, but instead offers an alternative to the basic Google Home for those who desire more than their speakerphone and are willing to pay extra for it. At $ 200, the Polk Assist costs $ 80 more than the Google Home, but its price is the same as the Sonos One powered by Alexa, which should be compatible with Google in the future.

Polk Assist – Design and Features [19659004] Essentially, the Polk Assist works like any other speaker using Google Assistant. Voice commands can be used to stream audio through the speaker, control smart home devices, stream media content to a TV with the help of a Chromecast or respond to a wide audience. range of questions. The differences between the Polk Assist and Google's own offer are in the hardware, both in terms of form and function.

The Polk Assist is about two inches taller, one inch wider and a little more boxed than the Google Home. Unlike the discreet and unobtrusive appearance of the House, Assist makes no attempt to cover the fact that it is a speaker. I prefer the clean look of Google, but there is nothing too offensive about how the product Polk is designed.

A speaker grill covers a vast majority of the Assist and on the top are physical buttons to control the volume, pause the audio or manually launch the listening function of the Google Assistant. A pair of microphones can also be found on the top, in addition to a collection of LED lights that are used to display status information such as the volume level or to let users know that they are on the go. he listens to an order.

The Assist does not include any audio input or output ports, so this is strictly a wireless case. Those with the Google Home app on their phone can easily establish a connection from the same Wi-Fi network as the speaker, or you can choose to connect them via Bluetooth.

The 40-watt Assist speaker is equipped with a 1-inch woofer and a 1-inch tweeter, as well as Polk's knowledge on how to provide quality sound. For comparison, the Google Home base comes with a 2-inch driver and two 2-inch pbadive radiators.

Polk Assist – Performance

Above all, a smart speaker must be able to hear and interpret your commands and inquiries. When in an empty house, Assist was easily able to pick me up by saying "Ok, Google," followed by questions about the weather, even when I was talking about a normal tone to some 30 feet or so from one corner. It's good enough for a smart speaker.

With the music played at a moderate level of my stereo between me and the Assist, I had to speak up to catch what I said, even though I was shouting away. With music on the rise, or when I used Assist for music at louder volumes, it was harder to hear me. However, this behavior is not unusual for the smart speakers I've used.

What sets Polk's Assist to Google Home is the way it handles audio. After a week of talking to my virtual badistant and asking him to play several Spotify playlists, it's clear that Polk's speaker works better than Google's base model, but only in certain situations. Assist eliminates well-balanced audio, with ups and downs delivered at acceptable levels. Listening at a moderate volume, there was not a huge difference between the two speakers, which is not a bad thing. In my review of the house, I noticed that Google's speaker sounded better than the Amazon Echo equipped with Alexa.

The well-established history of Polk with the speakers is much more obvious with the increased volume. The help can be significantly stronger than home and the music does not seem distorted or noisy in the process. The equalization levels remain balanced even with the volume all the way up and a good dose of bbad has been introduced too.

Despite its small size, the Assist should easily be able to provide the soundtrack for your next meeting or when you hang out at a garden barbecue. A dedicated speaker system would obviously be better, but for something that can be stored wirelessly anywhere in your home or office, the Assist is pretty good.