Amazon Echo or Google Home: Which smart speaker is best for you?

If you are looking for a small speaker, you can opt for an Apple HomePod with Siri on the inside or to take advantage of this $ 2250 Bang and Olufsen offer. However, if you're looking for the best value, the best features, and a solution that lets you stream music throughout your home, you really only have Amazon's Echo speakers and Google's Home range. .

Statistically, you are likely to buy more than one speaker and, depending on the size of your home, if you have three or four, you should be able to cover your entire home with these smart speakers. You can also access a wide range of games, applications and services, ranging from phone calls to viewing your calendar, sending messages and making phone calls.

Most places where Google Assistant and Alexa meet can be more or less contested.

Both offer a range of at least half a dozen speakers that you can mix and match this price to the sound and tone of the $ 49 Echo Dot and Home Mini (the Home Mini is actually better ) to the $ 130 Echo subwoofer, as well as amplifiers like the Echo Link and Echo Amp, coming soon.

Both can make phone calls and broadcast personalized information to your preferences in Alexa and Home applications. both can control thousands of smart home appliances; Both have focused on smart screens like Amazon Echo Show and Google Home Hub and on the interaction with visual interfaces this year, claiming to be the modern remote for streaming music and videos on televisions.

They both have recently updated smartphone apps and want to become an ubiquitous part of your life – at home, in your car and on your phone.

How do you decide which ecosystem to join? Here are some key things to consider when trying to choose speakers to buy.

Google answers questions better

What a surprise: Google, a company that has been gathering search queries for twenty years, has ranked first among the top intelligent assistants for its ability to answer questions correctly, answering 85.5% 800 questions asked in an annual digital assistant. test conducted by Loup Ventures.

In comparison, Siri came in second with 78.5% of accurate answers, followed by Alexa with 61.4 correct answers.

It's important to answer factual questions about the world for the subgroup of smart speaker owners who think their assistant should be able to get out of the traffic jam when he wonders who the fifth president was from the United States or if you have a house filled with curious children who want to hear what the mountain lions look like. (Note that Alexa can also answer both of these questions.)

Amazon is a better customer

It's shocking: Amazon, a company that has spent most of the past 20 years selling products around the world, has created a smart assistant who knows exactly what to buy.

This is especially evident when shopping with an Amazon Echo Show or the Alexa app on a PC, where each item is visible.

On an echo show, once your query is displayed on the screen, a carousel of items appears and you do not need to touch the screen to start looking for something something you need to buy, such as reviewing notes, price or Amazon Choice. status.

Screen or no screen, Amazon has run the Echo speakers as a giant Dash button. Shopping with an Echo speaker also takes into account your purchase history. If you say something like "rearranging paper towels", Alexa already knows what to order.

Whole Foods same day grocery orders were also activated for Echo devices.

Once your order has been placed, you can receive notifications from an Echo speaker, who shares alerts with flashing lights and voice alerts telling you when your package is on the way or has arrived. Echo View speakers show order updates on their screen.

The advantage of Google on Android

When you are not at home or near an Echo or Home speaker, it can still be helpful to leave your assistant available for hands-free interactions on your smartphone. The integration of Google Assistant in the Android operating system might be the biggest advantage of Google. on Amazon over time.

Nowadays, virtually all Android smartphones can communicate with Google Assistant by long pressing the home button. You can quickly set reminders that appear on smart screens like Google Home Hub.

The integration with Gmail means that Google Assistant on Android smartphones can answer questions such as "What is my next flight?" Or suggest reminders based on commitments made in emails.

Google Assistant is also able to provide multimodal experiences. For example, you can request instructions with a primary speaker and send them to Google Maps on your phone.

Last week, Google brought its assistant in the native Android Clock app. This follows the introduction of Google Assistant queries on Android phones, even locked, and an improved visual interface for Google Assistant on Android phones.

Only users of the Google Podcast app can go home and say "Ok Google, choose where I stopped in my podcast" to the speakers in your home. Smart speakers that interact with Google Assistant can now save the recipes you like. away from the device, you can view them in the Collections section of the Google application.

With the exception of Echo Look Fashion Assistant, Alexa does not deploy any computer vision related services for Echo device users. However, Google Lens with Google Assistant on Android is now integrated with the Pixel 3 Camera app and other popular smartphones.

Lens can extract images such as email addresses, websites and phone numbers, identify landscapes, works of art or similar fashion styles, as well as naming plants and animals.

Over time, you can bet that Google will only link its wizard to unique and popular features for the Android operating system.

The routines

The routines were introduced by Amazon last fall and by Google Assistant earlier this year. For both assistants, the routines allow you to do several things with one command.

They are based on one of the simplest and most consistent conclusions for smart speakers: users are more likely to use certain features, such as voice applications, if they are integrated with the rhythm of their daily lives.

Amazon and Google both want smart speaker users to be able to multitask with a single statement. You can get your news, weather and travel when you say "hello" and your assistant will lock your doors and activate home security systems when you say "goodnight" or "l & #" Bedtime ". able to launch specific applications Google Assistant.

Last week, Google added the Routines application to the Clock app on Android devices so that your "Good Morning" routine starts right after the alarm is turned off.

Alexa and Google Assistant let you create custom voice commands to do things. Apple's Siri joined this approach with the release of Shortcuts in iOS 12 this fall.

Alexa routines can be set up to control smart devices, get Alexa to say something, read your calendar, send an announcement to your Echo speakers, or tell you about traffic, news, or weather.

Routines can also be performed with the Echo buttons, so you can change the color of your lights when your team plays a big game.

The routines activated by the motion and contact sensors introduced this fall mean that you can automatically trigger actions such as playing a song when a person enters a room or simply turn on the lights and lift the lights. blinds.

In order to automate the home security of Echo speaker users, Amazon introduced Alexa Guard in September, which can alert you when it hears the sound of a smoke detector or broken glass. It integrates with home security systems such as ADT and Ring, owned by Amazon. Alexa Guard can also use random lights in your home to make you think you're at home. This comes in addition to the Absence Mode skill introduced earlier this year. Created by the editors Hippo Insurance and SNL, this skill gives the impression that you are at home conversing in a strange way.

Voice

Alexa is only available in a female voice, while Google Assistant can be configured for a male or female voice.

The Google Assistant currently has the choice of six voices: 3 men and 3 women. Although Alexa can speak with a British or Indian accent, there is only one Alexa voice available in American English.

Alexa learns, however, to speak as a news broadcaster, reported The Verge earlier this week.

The Google assistant should also have the voice of John Legend at some point.

Make audio groups

Without a doubt, the best thing about a Home or Echo speaker is to allocate them wisely throughout the house to create a seamless soundscape throughout the home. It's perfect during the holidays and the days when you want to fill the space.

They are also essential for Alexa ads and Google Home shows. This is when you send an audio message to your speaker collection so you can say "Dinner is ready".

The ability to add Chromecast to an audio group was introduced earlier this week. This allows you to stream music to your TV, speakers connected to your TV, and Home speakers. Smart screens can also be added to speaker groups now. Support for adding Fire TV to an Echo speaker group has not been added yet; However, support for third-party Echo loudspeakers in speaker groups was announced this fall.

Also recently, Google Home speakers have added the ability to respond to broadcasted messages.

Amazon Music updates from Alexa

You can now tell Alexa to send updates to Echo's speakers when a favorite artist publishes new music – this is definitely one of my favorite things to present this year. As simple as it sounds, as if Chromecast was added to the audio with Home speakers, it seems like this is the kind of thing that, when you experience it, makes you think, "Yeah, that should be available from the beginning. "

The recently shared figures from the voice analysis company Dashbot.io have confirmed what has always been the case: Music is one of the most popular ways to use a smart speaker.

Amazon Music displays song lyrics when you listen to music at an Echo Show and can display photos of specific groups, such as Coldplay, that go beyond album art. Amazon Music has been developed in several new countries this year.

Just for the kids

Experiments specifically designed for children are increasingly seen as selling points for the Echo and Home speakers. That's why Amazon launched its Echo Dot for Kids solutions in April and FreeTime Unlimited, which offer exclusive features such as ad-free radios or playlists, Disney and Nickelodeon character alarms, and premium skills. from National Geographic, Disney and Nickelodeon. .

There are also Alexa skills for kids with Sesame Street and SpongeBob offers, as well as subscription skill quizzes like Double Jeopardy!

For its part, last week, Google introduced 25 new titles for Read Along, which allows home speakers to play sound effects and music while you read a book. Alarms with the voices of animated characters like LEGO city and Nickelodeon Rise of mutant teenage ninja turtles were also introduced last week.

Google Assistant offers more than 50 apps and games for kids, from music chairs to quizzes and beatboxing. Say "OK Google, we play a game" and Google Assistant will be the host of your video game.

Echo Show vs. Home Hub

You've seen the names of these two devices quite often in this article, because they are an integral part of the company's product line. Amazon's Echo Show will be able to play music videos and surface content from Amazon Prime Video, Hulu Plus and Fire TV Recast DVR. Smart screens like Google's Home Hub will have access to YouTube and YouTube TV.

By further deepening the integration between Microsoft and Amazon, this week Skype video calls were introduced for Echo Show, while smart screens such as JBL Link View with Google Assistant are limited to Duo calls.

At $ 149, the Home Hub is cheaper than the Echo show at $ 229, but does not include a Zigbee Smart Home hub or a camera for video calls.

In ambient mode, Echo Show can be used to display digital photos for Amazon Prime Photos. It can also display your calendar, reminders, shipping notifications and reports chosen by the Alexa team.

The Home Hub can share recipe recommendations and recommendations for news videos based on the activity of the Google News app, said a spokeswoman for the company at VentureBeat , as well as viewing your Google photos.

These screens are also connected to Google's Nest Video Doorbell and Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell for live updates when someone shows up at the door. (The two bells can also alert you with voice if you decide not to get a smart display.)

The Google Assistant team said that in 2018, nearly half of interactions with Google Assistant involved both touch and voice. With this growing multimodal approach, the ease of use and diversity of experiences offered by a filtered device could come to define the coming age. conversational computing.

A key area to watch for: The Alexa presentation language is being rolled out on Facebook voice chat devices, Sony TVs and Lenovo tablets. An ecosystem of visual choices could make the difference for future assistants.

Last thoughts

As noted at the beginning of this article, this list is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of all the differences that can be considered by a Smart Enclosure marketer this year.

To be fair, I can not say for sure which of the two assistants is the best. They compete in many areas, both trying to demonstrate their personality and have advantages and disadvantages.

It is up to you to decide if the house or the echo is best for you.