(techno music)
- There's always been this rivalry between
the voice assistant devices from Amazon and Google.
And it makes sense, I mean, they both do similar things,
they live in a similar spot in your house, et cetera.
But now, Amazon has come out with
their latest version of the Amazon Echo, the Echo Show,
and now, it can not only talk to you
but also show you things as well.
Now, the Google Home obviously doesn't have a screen,
but Google does have Chromecast which, when plugged into
a TV or some other Chromecast enabled device,
Google Home can actually cast somethings to it.
So, the question arose, can a Google Home with a Chromecast
keep up with an Echo Show?
Now, the Echo Show has a speaker system
and microphones similar to the Echo,
but it also has this large touch-screen display
and a camera that I can utilize, as well.
Now, aside from all the audio stuff that clearly
both devices can do, let's just focus
on the stuff that a screen will help with.
Now, if you give Google Home a screen to use by
buying a Chromecast which is about $35 online
and plugging that into the HDMI slot of, say, a TV
that you already own, doing this will allow you
to play YouTube videos, Netflix, and things like that
on that TV by telling Google to cast to it,
but already there's a pretty big downside,
and that's the fact that Google at the moment
can't actually turn on the TV.
- [Google Home] Sorry, power control is not yet supported.
- Although this is a feature that might be coming
at some point, they say, but at the moment it can't.
So that means that you either have to turn the TV on
and then issue your command, or you kinda just
have to leave the TV on all the time which already
kind of seems like a really bad idea.
So now, some of the things that both of these can do.
Now both can play a specific video
on their screen using YouTube for both of them,
and then both can also play a recipe video.
Now, Google will use YouTube to just
pick a recipe video and play that,
whereas Echo Show can use the Allrecipes app
to display a recipe video that way.
But there's already some differences to note.
The first difference you'll notice is that
Google just kinda picks whatever video
it thinks works for what you're asking.
It is just that, too.
It's just a video.
There's no instructions that go along,
no lists, no ingredients for recipes, for example,
no options for other videos.
It's just a video.
The Echo Show, on the other hand, will show you options
for videos and recipes that you can select
by saying show one, show two, show three, et cetera.
And, for the recipes in the Allrecipes app,
it'll show you the written recipe and ingredients first
and then give you the option to say play video after.
And this is where the Google Home and Chromecast combo
starts to lose the video battle pretty quickly.
Besides watching videos on YouTube and recipes,
the Echo Show also allows you to see lists of movies playing
in your area, shopping lists, lyrics to songs,
displays news highlights that you can ask to elaborate on,
calendar events and more, all things that the Home,
being that it wasn't obviously designed
with a screen in mind, just can't do.
No here's one of my favorite features of the Echo Show,
Drop In.
Using the Alexa app on your phone, you or anyone else
that you give access to can simply tap Drop In
and choose the Echo Show to instantly be connected
in a video call with the screen and check on the house
or ask somebody in the kitchen how many lemons
you should bring home from the grocery store, et cetera.
Now, the Google Home is supposedly getting
the ability to make calls to any U.S. phone
which is actually really cool and a little bit
more functional than say just calling other people
with Echoes, but there's no word
on when that's actually going to be available
and of course no word on how video calling
will be handled because, again, considering
there is no screen and there is no camera.
Along with Drop In, there's also some companies
like Ring, for example, that makes smart doorbells
that will allow the Echo Show to actually dip into
the camera so you can say things like, show me
the front door camera, and Ring will send the video feed
to your Echo Show which is pretty neat.
Google Home could potentially do something like this,
but again, it would have to display it
on the TV which is not as useful.
Bottom line, Google Home has some screen enabled abilities,
but it's just not even in the same category
as the Echo Show.
It is just a completely different thing now
compared to the Google Home.
Now, Google Home is still way better
at general knowledge questions, like, you just want
to ask it a question and get an answer
because it has the power of Google.
It literally can just Google it for you
and then spit out the best result that it finds.
And Amazon just doesn't really have that ability.
The thing is, obviously, if you want a device
like this that can show you things instead of
just telling you them, you kinda have to go
with the one with the word show in the name.
Weird.
There you go guys, quick answer
to a question that I was being asked.
I mean the clear answer is no, but let me know
what you guys think in the comments below.
I would love to hear from you guys.
Of course, Google Home is gonna be getting
a lot of new features, but do you think, maybe,
Google will come out with a screen version,
or are they just gonna kinda leave this to Amazon?
Let me know what you guys think, and also, if you did like
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Love to see you guys see this and talk to me.
It's all good stuff.
I appreciate it.
Regardless, though, thanks for watching.
(techno music)