- Good day, it's Peter Moriarty here
covering off my opinions of the Google Assistant
from using it since launch.
(jazzy music)
Now, if you've been following us for a while,
you would know I recorded a video a couple years ago
on Google's initial launch of the Google Home.
And that was really the first hard launch of hardware
to house the Google Assistant and you know,
turn it into something that actually came into your home
and became useful.
Now, there's been a lot of additions, a lot of changes
and to be honest, some things that are still bloody terrible
about the Assistant since then,
and I wanted to cover some of those things off
and give you a bit of an update on my thoughts.
We've had customers who have made use of the Assistant
and used it, we've had some customers who have used it
and then gone ahead and returned it again.
And I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it.
And to be honest, I've procrastinated making this video
because my position and opinion on it
really is changing sometimes week to week.
So first off, let's cover some of the things
I am actually using the Assistant for.
Since I got it, it's been perfect for things like timers,
reminders, setting alarm and all of the basic kind of things
that the Assistant is great for.
You can just yell at it in the kitchen
or the lounge room to set timers,
and it's gonna help you with the cooking
with, you know, running around the house or...
You know, the kind of thing that you would normally go ahead
and pick up a phone for, but you don't wanna mess around
with having to touch something.
It's great if you're putting something in the oven
and you wanna yell and set a timer,
all of those things, it's grateful.
But that's not really what the Assistant is for.
What was promised to us was full automation of your home,
like a Java style, you know, have everything done for you.
And I've experimented with a lot of different
apps and solutions and even a lot of hardware as well
to see where I might be able to get it to fit.
So the integrations I'm most commonly using right now
are actually switches from WeMo.
Now these are made by Belkin
or I think maybe Belkin acquired them,
but the WeMo switches allow me to switch on and off lights
switch on and off hardware, like my stereo,
I use it for a computer that I've got as well,
and basically it's kind of like hard
pushing in or unplugging something.
Now, these are useful to turn something
like the stereo behind me on, but the thing that I find is,
even when I switch it on with the WeMo switch,
I still have to then go and press the button
to take the stereo out of standby to switch it on.
So it's not truly switching the device on,
it's great for switching it off, but switching it on,
it doesn't really do exactly what I want it to do.
Same kind of thing with a heater.
I have a heater in my office,
and I can switch the heater off by having that switched off,
but when it's plugged back in,
the heater doesn't automatically come on.
Now, if you've got a more simple device
like a lamp, or maybe a fan,
you know then you can leave the on switch on,
but anything digital that has a kind of standby mode
doesn't really work.
And I first came up against this,
when I had it plugged into my TV.
I wanted to be able to turn the TV off,
but then also turn the TV back on and what was happening
was the TV would switch on into standby mode.
So I'd yell at Google to turn on the TV
and then I'd go and find the remote
to turn the TV on a second time.
So that's just not really useful,
it kind of like half does what I want it to do.
Now while we're talking about external devices,
yes, I've been able to use the switches
to turn on and off some lights,
but the down lights in my house
don't have any kind of automation built into them.
And it's not really as simple as just changing a globe,
because as you can see, they're halogen down lights
and they're dimmable.
So for me to actually integrate the Google Assistant
into each one of these,
I would have to either rip out each one of the lights
and switch them over to smart systems,
or I would have to at a minimum rip off the PowerPoint,
sorry, the switches and you know,
get them re-plugged into smart switches.
Now, some of the smart switches online
really vary in quality and honestly the whole setup
was just gonna be too much of a hassle
for me to bother with.
I also don't know how long I might be in this place for.
And so I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to rip out
every single light switch in the house
just to get the smart functionality.
So for now, I'm stuck with really basic
switch on, switch off lights.
And it's not the end of the world,
but it's not quite what Google promised.
So the one thing I'm definitely
using Google Assistant for, is music.
And I was previously a big fan of Sonos,
I had Sonos right through the whole house,
you can even see still here that Sonos beam,
that's the last bit of Sonos hardware
that I have left around my place.
You don't even have to use your phone,
to pair it or anything,
you can just basically get Sonos to play stuff.
It's really, really cool.
But, but it wasn't all that great on the integrations.
Google have only just announced
that they have started working with Sonos
in the last few months, it first rolled out to the U.S.,
it finally came to Australia.
And I held out with all of my Sonos here,
so I could speak to Google and have Google
control the music on my Sonos.
And Sonos even integrated the Google Assistant
into some of their hardware.
So I can talk to the Sonos hardware, if it has a microphone
like the Sonos beam that's sitting right behind me
and have that actually,
you know, do commands for my Google stuff.
But both of those experiences just weren't that great.
When I was trying to control the Sonos from the Assistant
as in from my other Google Assistants like my Google Home,
it was pretty damn clunky.
And when I tried to use the Google Assistant on the Sonos,
it was difficult to differentiate
if I wanted the Sonos to play music,
or if I wanted, you know, something to be displayed
on my TV, like the weather or a YouTube video,
and it just turned into a mess.
What I found was switching to Google Audio Chromecast,
and plugging each one of those into individual stereos
in around my home,
like the stereo that I have sitting behind me,
was a much better experience
than bothering with all the Sonos gear.
Now, not only that, the Sonos gear is quite expensive.
We're talking $1,000 for soundbar,
it was you know, upwards of six $700
just for one speaker to cover off a room.
And I prefer to buy quality Hi-Fi gear
and plug in a Google Chromecast Audio.
Only problem is Google have discontinued
the Chromecast Audios.
The only Chromecast available now
are ones that you plug into the TV.
You can put in an HDMI through the TV
and then pass through from the TV back out to a stereo,
but you're gonna potentially have some kind
of audio degradation with that, and I've tested it,
there is definitely a quality difference.
So if you're interested in playing music,
right now the best solution, it's not a great one,
but the quality is great and multi-room is great.
I've got Google homes in every room,
and in each one of those rooms where there's a stereo,
I've got a Google Chromecast Audio.
Now you can't buy them anymore,
so you can just grab one of those on eBay,
which is what I've been doing, and that lets you get
each one of your stereos connected and in sync
with your audio in every room.
But don't let that convince you
that Google's multi-room Audio solution is a bad idea.
I still thoroughly recommend this over Sonos,
it's easier to set up and something like the Google Home
is big enough for a bathroom
to be able to play music everywhere.
Now Google Home is a couple 100 bucks
for the original version and that can fill a room
like a bathroom where you don't have to spend
four or $500 or more on a sonar system just for that room.
You can see here that each positive
comes with it a few caveats and a few things
that are still janky about this.
I haven't even got to the bad stuff yet,
these are still the positives.
Now one of the things that I've used consistently
and this has probably been the most useful task
right across the whole time that I've owned the Google Home
is Google's Shopping List.
I can say the trigger word,
I can ask Google to add something to my shopping list,
bang, it's done.
Now, this is all good, but also has something weird to it.
There's no Shopping List app, Google just hasn't made one.
And they haven't integrated this with Google Keep either.
And so anytime I go to the shops,
and I wanna open my Google Shopping List,
I've got to open a browser
and then open shoppinglist.google.com.
I bet you didn't even know it existed,
I didn't either until I wondered
where my shopping list items were going
'cause they weren't showing up in Google Keep.
So let's talk about the stuff that's not working.
Now, G Suite integration for the Assistant sucks.
It's so bad, it's still so bad and I don't know
how Google have got it so wrong for business owners
that are using G Suite, who are Google's biggest supporters?
We're the ones paying money for AdWords,
we're the ones paying money for the Google services.
Yes, I understand Google, you are a consumer company
and your Gmail and your assistant services
are consumer focused.
But please, please, please fix the G Suite integration.
Now, the Google Calendar was supposed to work
with the Assistant years ago,
and it just didn't work inside of G Suite.
And then it started working when Google announced,
hey, we're gonna make the Calendar work
inside of G Suite.
Now watch this, hey Google,
what's on my calendar for today?
(inaudible)
Oh, wait, what's that?
It's still not working, we are years down the line
and I still don't have a working G Suite Calendar
with my Google Assistant.
For some reason, it happens to work in the U.S.
for some customers admittedly,
but no, it doesn't work for me, maybe I'm just special
or maybe all of my other Australian friends
who told me it doesn't work for them either,
well, maybe there's something
a little bit more than that going on.
So Google, please fix your G Suite support.
Now, until recently, Google's had a great integration
with the tasks feature.
I've really been trying hard to use Google Tasks,
I use Asana for less shared tasks across their company,
but if I wanna actually work with Google,
on a, you know, kind of like individual basis
for my individual tasks, I've been testing out Google Tasks.
There's a great app for iOS, there's a great app for Android
works nicely inside of Gmail and inside the Calendar.
And until a couple of weeks ago,
it also works fine using the Google Assistant.
But do you think that works for me now?
Hey, Google, add a task.
(inaudible) Okay.
Yet again, we're stuck.
The last issue that I have with Google
is the inconsistencies between the different devices.
Now sometimes I'll be in the kitchen
and I'll wanna ask the stereo to do something
and I will ask something of my Google Home,
and what will happen is my phone will light up
and the Assistant on my phone
will try and respond to the interaction.
But it doesn't always work on my phone,
because some commands don't work on the phone
that work on the Google Home, but Google doesn't know
that I was trying to talk to the Google Home
and not the Google Assistant on my phone.
And so what I've had to do
is I've actually had to switch off
the Assistant on my phone.
I found that it got triggered at random times,
and it was just to be honest, bloody annoying.
The other thing is that if the phone was triggered,
it wouldn't always hear what I was saying,
because the microphone quality isn't as great
as the dedicated Google Home devices.
And so I was yelling across the room
to try and get to the Google Home,
when my Google phone would then pick me up
and the Google Home would stop listening,
because the phone was listening to me.
And it's just been such a tough experience
where Google was supposed to be this one Assistant
which was supposed to be easy for everything.
So you can see here, it's clear I have really, truly
a love and hate relationship
with Google Assistant right now.
It's been awesome, but like 75% awesome.
And so if you wanna ask my true recommendation
on whether or not you should have Google Assistant
in your home?
Yes, you should.
It's great, it saves time, it makes it easy.
Do you wanna go crazy and buy one important
in every single room?
I don't know if it's that useful for you right now.
Does it work for you when you know connected
to a Chromecast on the TV and you wanna play YouTube videos
and that kind of stuff?
Yeah, it's pretty groovy.
If you wanna ask for it the weather,
it does a pretty good job of doing that.
If you wanna set a kitchen timer,
it does a good job on that.
Is it as good as other solutions out there on the market?
Well, I'm not sure you have to be the judge of that.
Inevitable question that I'm gonna get
is well, why don't you just switch to something like Google,
you know, something like Amazon Alexa, and use that?
Well, that has its drawbacks as well.
And to be honest, I want to love Google.
I want to use Google, I want this to work
but Google, you're making it damn hard.
So I'd love to know your thoughts, your comments.
Is Google Home working for you?
Is the Assistant trash,
or is it actually something useful in your life?
Drop your comments down below
and I'll look forward to catching you in the next one.
Of course, if you need any help in the Google world
with your G Suite, with your business applications,
we are primarily a business channel,
but we like to cover off the Google consumer stuff
from time to time, then now get in touch with us
head along to itgenius.com,
and we'll be very happy to help out
with any business needs you have in the Google world.
Till next time, cheers.
(whooshing)
(upbeat music)