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Intelligent badistants powered by artificial intelligence are all the rage these days and all major technology companies seem to have already developed such a service or adopted somebody else.
Amazon, integrated into its Echo devices, is the dominant market Siri of Apple, Cortana of Microsoft, Samsung's Bixby and Google's Assistant are among the main competitors
Google has integrated its offer in a home help product called Home – a smart speaker that can be left in any room is power and a WiFi connection and that can offer a range of useful services.
DESIGN
The camera itself is white in color with a slate fabric base where the speaker is housed.
It has a touch-sensitive surface on the sloped top to control the volume, play, pause and activate it without the wakeup word, while the mic is also positioned there.
On the side is the mic mute button as well as a power status light.
Four colored lights on the top appear, spin and jog when the device hears the waking words, "Hey Google" or "Ok Google".
The same lights turn continuously when he thinks and
They also provide an indication of what happens when the device is being set up and when the system performs a whole range of functions.
All in all, it does not look too bad and blends better in its environment than the Amazon Echo.
SERVICES
But the material is really secondary when it comes to Google Home and other similar gadgets
will do its best to deal with any query or request that you launch and leverage the power of Google search and other services in the ecosystem to do it.
This is not perfect – far from it in fact – but it is getting a lot of time and the performance will only improve as the lea rns system and the technology goes on. ;improved.
One of the main functions that most users are likely to use is music.
Audio quality, although not great, is pretty good considering its size and price. ] The device can run a number of music streaming services, including (unsurprisingly) Google Play Music, Spotify, YouTube Music and Pandora, allowing you to theoretically access tens of millions of songs.
Google Cast is integrated with Google Home, so you can stream audio or video via WiF to other devices connected to a Chromecast.
It is not always perfect to recognize what you asked for, especially if the name of the song, the artist or the show is obscure
He also reads audiobooks at from Google Play Books and broadcasts podcasts.
SMART HOME
The smart home feature is also integrated into the device.
It can connect to a wide range of smart home ecosystem Most of the major platforms are there, like Nest, of course, but also Philips Hue, Hive, Samsung SmartThings and well … other.
The implementation of this integration is quite easy and fast. or so I was able to bark Google's home instructions to turn on and turn off my smart lights.
With more and more ecosystems being added to the Google Home platform all the time, most traditional devices should be supported. ] You can link together a series of actions on smart home devices using the "If this, then that (IFTTT)" service, but unlike Amazon Echo, it is not built into the system. ;application.
There are also a number
Most of these functions revolve around the wide range of functions that third party developers have produced for the Echo – what is called skills.
You can get simple localized content. , like updating news from RTE News for examp but, overall, the range of customized services on offer is limited to date.
Another surprising aspect of Google Home is that it does not fully integrate with many of the basic services that Google has built its empire. on, like Gmail, Docs, etc.
You can get a list of your events for the day from Calendar, but you can not add new ones, for example.
It is likely that this deficiency will be corrected
CONFIDENTIALITY AND SECURITY
When it comes to privacy and your home device may be listening and to record your conversations, then to transmit this information to the mothership or further, Google states
It says that the device listens in small bits of a few seconds each the word of awakening
These extracts are deleted if the tracking word is not detected, and none of this information comes out of your device until the wake word is heard.
es Google Home records what you say and sends it (including recording a few seconds) to Google in order to respond to the request.
But these records can be deleted at any time via the My Activity section of the application. 19659002] Regarding the data after that, Google indicates that the usual backups are in place, etc., but you may want to read the full explanations yourself to make sure you are satisfied.
The Google Assistant has also enabled "SafeSearch" by default, which helps to filter our explicit results.
CONCLUSION
In summary, there are many things to like about Google Home.
Sounds good, it's pretty simple to adjust
Integration with Chromecast is definitely an advantage over the competition.
And yet, having tested both Amazon and Echo for a while, one has the impression that he still has his nose forward in the race.
It's voice recognition is smooth It has more features to offer thanks to Skills, smart home integrations are more advanced and the application is more refined.
That, of course, is the current situation, but with all its power and expertise, Google is likely to evolve the Home device at a rapid pace, leading to better integration with Google's services and to other third-party offers.
At 149 € including free shipping, the house is slightly cheaper than the Echo Plus.
But it is likely that in time, the marginal gap between the two products on the price and the features will be much smaller.
Comments welcome via Twitter to @willgoodbody
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