- The new Google Home is Google's answer
to Amazon's Echo, the voice activated bluetooth
speaker and home automation assistant.
Now before going into a comparison though,
let's discuss the Google Home itself.
(exciting rhythmic music)
Looking at the Google Home, plenty of you have noticed
that it looks a bit like an air freshener.
Now frankly though, I have to respectfully disagree.
Wait a second, crap.
Okay, so here is the Google Home,
and its air freshener looks aside,
it does look like it belongs in your home.
It's a lot smaller than say, the Echo,
and just has a look that that will probably fit
well with most of your other appliances.
The bottom grill that covers the speakers
is interchangeable as well with a few different
color options.
That grill is covering a couple speakers that sound
pretty decent.
While not the loudest of bluetooth speakers,
they do sound pretty good and crisp.
The Echo, however, wins for the better quality
and volume, even if it is just by a bit.
(fun exciting music)
♫ What keeps the planet spinning
♫ Uh uh, the force from the beginning
♫ What keeps the planet spinning
♫ Uh huh, the force from the beginning
And unlike the Echo, you can actually set a default
music player when setting it up,
so it will automatically play using that to play
your music instead of trying to use Google Play
or Amazon Music, depending on the device.
Statistically speaking, by the way,
you probably don't use either of those.
Now I use Spotify for mine, and that means when I say,
"Okay Google, play my upbeat playlist."
- [Woman] All right, playing your Spotify playlist
called Upbeat.
(fun exciting music)
- It knows to automatically find that particular playlist
in Spotify, and can do the same for Google Play,
YouTube music, and Pandora, for now.
But I expect a ton of more will be integrated soon.
On top of this, Google Home can also do multi room support,
and Echo can't.
That means that if you have multiple Google Homes,
and an apartment home that's not minuscule like mine,
you can have it play music on all of them in sync,
or have it move the music to different rooms,
depending on where you are.
Besides being a pretty decent voice controlled speaker,
the Home is also a voice activated way of interacting
with other connected appliances.
These all require you to have said smart devices all ready,
but if you all ready do, or you decide to buy some
after you get the new Google Home,
you'll be able to control them with your voice.
Right now it only works with SmartThings,
a brand that's owned by Samsung now,
that creates all sort of different home automation
contraptions, Nest, which has smart security cameras
and thermostats, and of course, is owned by Google.
And Philips Hue, which is Philips' selection
of smart light bulbs.
But you can expect more and more to be added to this soon.
It's pretty easy to set these things up too,
just open the new Google Home app,
tap devices, then type the plus sign to add a new device.
You can choose which kind, as long as they're all ready
connected to the same wifi network as the Home,
it should find them and you can just tap them to
allow Google Home to control them.
You can then create rooms for each set of devices
to allow you to say turn off all the lights in one room,
or play music on a stereo in one room, et cetera.
And then you can give them nicknames so that you can
turn off the specific devices as well.
The idea being that you can tell your Google Home
to do things like okay, Google,
dim the apartment lights to 50%, et cetera,
and control any of those connected devices with your voice.
The Amazon Echo can also do the exact same stuff,
and even more because of its integration with
If This Then That, which is a site that allows you
to connect services that have triggers,
and set off certain scenarios.
So for example, if you connect your Echo to
If This Then That, then you can tell it to trigger
lockdown, Alexa.
And Alexa will turn off your lights,
make sure your doors are locked if you have smart locks,
and even silence your Android phone, et cetera.
And there are a bunch of these,
and you can even create your own.
Now Google Home doesn't have this at the moment,
but it's definitely coming, and probably will have
a lot of the Android device oriented stuff built in
with even more options, thanks to the fact that both
are Google products.
I think when I'm on my way home, turn the air to 70 degrees,
the lights on, start playing my playlist,
send a text to my girlfriend.
Again, can't do any of that now,
but all of that is probably coming.
Besides being a decent speaker and voice controller
for your smart appliances, Home can set multiple timers
like the Echo can do as well,
and answer questions like Alexa does as well.
Now the difference here though is the all might reach
of Google.
Asking either for simple facts gives you pretty
straightforward answers, IE how tall is the Eiffel Tower?
- [Woman] The Eiffel Tower's height is 1,063 feet,
324 meters.
- [Woman] The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet tall.
- But when you start to get a little more complex,
the Home wins pretty easily.
This is down to the fact that it can actually grab
information from across the web to help,
and just like the web, while not always correct,
it is using Google web search.
And it does tend to be correct a decent majority
of the time.
Some example questions that you can ask Home and not Echo
are how do I cook a hamburger on the stove?
- [Woman] According to Food Network,
flip over the burgers, cook each burgers until
golden brown and slightly charred on the second side.
Four minutes for medium rare or until cooked to a desire
degree of doneness.
- [David] How do you calculate slope?
- [Woman] According to the Physic's Classroom,
pick two points on the line and determine their coordinates,
determine the difference in Y coordinates of these
two points.
Determine the difference in X coordinates
for these two points.
Divide the difference in Y coordinates
by the difference in X coordinates.
- [David] What is the MPG of the new Chevy Camaro?
- [Woman] 2017 Chevrolet Camaro's MPG is up to 22 city,
31 highway.
- [David] Can cats eat grapes?
- [Woman] According to Pet MD,
cats are not likely to eat these,
and there are no reports of cats becoming
ill from these foods.
- And you get the idea.
In fact, it becomes an interesting game to see if you
can actually stump Google Home with questions.
So when it comes to knowledge,
it's just too hard for Amazon to compete
with the knowledge that Google has.
The Echo has been around for almost two years longer
than the Google Home though,
and with that comes a few advantages.
Besides the Home integration with more devices,
and the If This Then That that I mentioned earlier,
Echo also has skills.
These are essentially apps for the Echo that third
parties can create using the Echo API to extend
its functionality.
You can test your Harry Potter knowledge,
have it tell you facts about cats, and so on.
Now I personally don't use any of these because
I think they're a bit of a gimmick.
Others might actually enjoy them.
And Google will most likely not integrate these
types of things into Google Home,
at least not quite in the same way.
Now overall, Alexa wins for the speaker quality,
but only just.
And Echo has skills that I never use,
and you can technically say that Alexa is
faster than Okay Google.
Besides those things though,
it's about $50 more expensive than the Home,
it has more integration than the Home at the moment
for Home automation, but that will undoubtedly
change in the next few months or so,
and it can't answer questions like Google can.
On top of that, Google will supposedly learn from you
using its AI and Google Assistant,
and even more so if you use Google Assistant on your phone,
of course.
And will become further and further integrated
with your phone for even more possible scenarios
that it can help in.
Thinking of what Home will soon be
versus what it and Echo are now,
it's hard to not suggest the Home over the Alexa
for someone looking for something like this.
(mumbles) guys, I hope you enjoyed that quick little
review and slight comparison against the Alexa,
because it's the only real competing product
out right now.
But if you did, please first off, let me know what you
guys think about the Alexa and the Home,
and all this stuff, in the comments below.
I love to read what you guys have to say.
And if you like this video, please thumbs up it
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And as always, thanks for watching.
(exciting rhythmic music)