What's up guys!
It's Chris Majestic here with Majestechs and today we're looking at Google Home.
So the Google Home is going to be a small speaker that you would sit in your house that
has Google Assistant built into it so you can ask it questions.
You can do calculations.
You can do home automation tasks.
It links with other hubs.
But the big thing setting this apart from the Echo and Echo Dot is the fact that it
has access to the largest search engine in the world, which is Google, obviously.
So setting this thing up is really easy.
You're just going to plug it in and it's going to turn on and talk you through the setup
process and the app looks a lot like the Chromecast App especially since it connects with Chromecast.
So if you go through the settings you see things like "Things To Ask, Music, Home Control",
you can get to your shopping list, rename your devices like your Chromecast or whatever
if you want to.
So to activate this thing you're going to say "Hey Google" followed by whatever your
command is.
It can be a simple question.
It can be complex search engine question.
It can be a command to turn lights off and all kinds of things.
And you can have it trigger videos to play through your Chromecast around your house.
So right now it works natively with Nest, IFTTT, SmartThings, and Philips Hue.
So I'm sure that list will grow in the future but those are the devices that it works directly
with right now.
As far as design goes, the Google Home doesn't look that bad.
It fits in pretty well with a kitchen or sitting it on a counter or desk or table or something
like that.
It doesn't stand out too much even though it's white.
And you're only going to find one physical button, which is the "mute" button on the
back and the top is actually going to be capacitive.
You can touch is to start/stop music or just turn your finger on it to turn the volume
up or down.
You're going to have two microphones on the top of it that are actually pretty good at
picking up your voice from another room.
And then you have the bottom, which actually twists off and you can get different color
shells for the bottom if you want.
So to save all of you Android people the trouble that have Android phones, I won't say "Ok Google"
other than this one time.
I'll actually be using "Hey Google" throughout the duration of this video just so I'm not
setting off your devices.
It will activate with either one.
So right now the TV is off so using HDMI-CEC, if you have that on your TV, you can just
tell it to play on that Chromecast.
It will play the video or do whatever you want and turn the TV on so let's see.
Chris: "Hey Google.
Play CNN on Basement Office."
Google Home: "Sure.
Playing CNN from Youtube on Basement Office."
Chris: "Hey Google.
Set the downstairs temperature to 72 degrees."
Google Home: "You got it.
Setting the downstairs to 72 degrees."
Chris: "Hey Google.
Turn on the Basement TV."
Google Home: "Sure.
Turning the Basement TV on."
Chris: "Hey Google.
Turn on House Alarm Stay."
Google Home: "Sure.
Turning the House Alarm Stay On."
Chris: "Hey Google.
Turn on Chris' Garage Door."
Google Home: "Sure.
Turning the Chris Garage Door on."
Chris: "Hey Google.
Set the Basement Lights to 10%."
Google Home: "You got it.
Setting two lights brightness to 10%."
Alexa.
How long would it take to walk from the White House to the Washington Monument?
Alexa: Sorry.
I can't find the answer to the question I heard.
Hey Google.
How long would it take to walk from the White House to the Washington Monument?
Google Home: It takes 18 minutes to walk from the White House to Washington Monument.
Hey Google.
What about driving?
Google Home: "On your way to Washington Monument there's heavier traffic than usual.
The route via 15th street NW is still the fastest.
It is 14 minutes by car.
So as you can see it's more conversational so it knew that I was asking about directions
from going from the White House to the Washington Monument so it knows like okay, this next
question is probably going to be related to that.
So it kind of uses context clues.
Chris: "Hey Google.
Play Black Beatles."
Google Home: "Black Beetles by Rae Sremmurd.
Sure.
Playing on Youtube."
♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
Chris: "Hey Google! Stop!"
So despite it's small size this speaker actually gets pretty loud and it sounds pretty good
in a small to medium-sized room.
Another cool thing you can do with the Google Home is buy more than one and you can put
them all around your house and you can link them up and actually play whole home music
or play music through them simultaneously, which is a pretty cool idea.
Now this is a pretty cool speaker but it does have some drawbacks.
One thing is that it doesn't allow you to have multiple users so you can only link 1
Google account with this thing at a time.
Another thing is that it doesn't yet have an open API so that means it doesn't have
different skills or different Smartapps that work with it.
It only gives you what it has.
You can't and start adding other apps and things like that or different skills like
you can with Amazon Echo.
Another things is that it doesn't have an Aux port.
Now to be fair the Amazon Echo, the original Amazon Echo, doesn't either but the Echo Dot
does and that allows for flexibility for you to connect it to like your home stereo and
get amazing sound out of it.
You can't really do that with this.
So if you're tossed between this and the Amazon Echo, the real deciding factor is going to
be are you a Google person?
Do you have Google devices all over your house?
Do you have Chromecast, your Google phones, and things like that?
I'm sure the expandability is going to grow with integration between this and your phone.
Do you ask a lot of questions, like doing a lot of Google searches and things like that?
Considering that Alexa or Amazon Echo is using Bing and this is using Google, Google is going
to be a whole lot better.
So it really depends on what you want to do and if you want to wait for more home automation.
If you're not doing a ton of home automation and you're just using this to do things like
play music, ask questions, and do calculations and things like that, then honestly I'd probably
get the Google Home just because it's going to be better.
It's going to be more conversational.
You can ask it more complex questions.
You can continue to talk to it instead of constantly having to talk to it like a robot
like you do with the Amazon Echo.
Alright guys well that's it for this video.
I do want to hear your comments so go ahead and post in the comments section and I'll
respond to your comments.
Thanks for watching the video.
If you liked it please mash that Like button for me and I'll see you in the next one.