it's time to pit Amazon versus Google in the most epic battle of smart displays
ever that or it's time for an in-depth comparison
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life
and today I'm going to take the frustration out of automation by helping
you choose between the two largest smart displays from Google and Amazon now the
Amazon echo show is in its second generation of device while the nest hub
Max is really the larger version of the nest hub with some improvements there in
terms of pricing both of these smart displays sit at $230 USD any given day
although there are sales always that you can watch for but the capabilities are
the general capabilities really are the same in terms of what their voice
assistance can do amazon has their own and google has their own voice assistant
and overall capabilities are really similar now we'll talk about the
differences of what each device does really a lot better in a minute but for
now let's start with the hardware comparison the Amazon echo show second
generation is a 10.1 inch smart display with HD resolution at about 1280 by 800
now that's exactly the same resolution as the 10-inch nest hub max but it's got
a little better pixels per inch ratio because it's only a 10 inch screen but
let's be honest on a day-to-day basis there's no differential between the way
these two look in terms of video quality what I will say I find is that this does
a bit of a better job of being an overall display it's a little bit more
muted because of the ambient EQ Amazon tends to do a lot of kind of what people
are calling Amazon voice assistant ads that tells you things to try and it sits
there and it rotates now well you can turn most of that off you can't turn all
of it off and I just find overall this is a more pleasing display to look at
because of that ambient EQ capability that Google I think has worked very hard
on if you're looking for something that's very bright very vivid
hits the color profile I think a little better than the nest hub max does well
that's right here so if you're going to watch a lot of video content I think
this is a great option for you just know that it's going to be busy and moving
throughout your home at a lot of the time when I look at the two devices I
see some additional refinement over here and if I was to put this very simply
this looks like a newer LCD or LED TV whereas this has the shape of what I
would call an old CRT monitor and you know for you kids that was something
that burned your eyes out as you played video games as a kid when I was a kid so
you know it it just reminds me of that kind of shape and that look and that
feel when I move on to the speakers this has a great new design that I really
love the speakers are bi-directional and configured which is a huge couple of
words to try and say on a youtube video but the the tweeters are coming out the
front and the woofer is coming out the back so you can get this reflection
capability right here and I do think they've directed the tweeters a little
bit down and you get a really nice reflection off of the surface it's
sitting on now what I'll tell you is that overall you're not going to find
any of these two speakers to be bad are these two speaker systems to be bad the
speakers on the Amazon echo show over here I think you'll find it's a little
stronger on the lower end of the frequencies sometimes the design has it
feeling or sounding a little muffled and sometimes a little distorted out of it
but overall this speaker is excellent and this speaker is excellent and on a
day to day basis you're not really going to see a difference
they both can make phone calls they both can make video calls because they have
cameras on board they are both Bluetooth capable although there's a little
difference that Amazon does better which I'll talk about in a minute and they're
both Wi-Fi dual Wi-Fi band capable for connections so this is where we'll start
to diverge though and I'm going to talk about some of the things that the echo
show does much better than the nest hub map the management of calendars on the
echo show and really any Amazon voice assistant enabled device they have iOS
Microsoft calendars and Gmail calendars whereas Google only has gmail calendar
so it takes some extra work over here to synchronize those other calendar type
the echo show also has an onboard web browser actually two of them whereas
Google really doesn't have one at least not one you can use to navigate the web
or bring up with just a command this allows entrant into almost every web
site and some additional home control which that's another thing that Amazon
does really well they have more integration with more different smart
home products out there they're just more people making Amazon voice
assistant and Nabal products and that means this has more connectivity options
not only that but there's a full ZigBee hub inside of this and you might not
know what that means but basically ZigBee devices are low-power and that
means you can connect some of those devices there are limitations to what
you can connect here versus some other smart home hubs on the market but that
is sitting here inside of the echo show and so that allows you to kind of start
your smart home just with this device now this has a thread hub on it but
really that thread hub is not being utilized and Google's still in the
starting stages of really getting that up and running with the nest hub Macs on
top of that this capability of having a ZigBee hub over here means and there's
some other things that go into this but Amazon's routine capability is really an
automation capability you can use devices to trigger things to have
but you actually can't do that still over here with the nest hub max now this
will change by the time we're in early 2020 that has to be here on the Google
nest hub max there's some other reasons for that that I won't go into but it
will be here but right now it's here and Amazon continues to move forward with
that capability it's pretty good one big note from me this was something I've
utilized a number of times now I can connect to bluetooth or use this as a
Bluetooth speaker without an internet connection and that's because of how
Amazon gives you the ability to swipe down and get to the Bluetooth settings
even if you don't have an internet connection I can't do that over here and
it was a big deal at a couple of events that I've brought this to which is again
a good enough speaker for a lot of events the drop in feature which allows
you to essentially use this as an intercom it's a big deal to some people
and the ability to adjust the weight word through a couple of different
things is a big deal to people as well or some people anyways neither of those
things show up over here although Google has a new call home feature we can call
all of your devices at home to kind of have a conversation there in terms of TV
and media services the fire TV sticks work really well over here Google has
their chromecast but the fire TV sticks are much better interface to utilize in
a lot of ways and same with their fire TV cube they just they have something
there it's really good but what kind of happens with all of the TV and music
services is while you're in the US Amazon has a ton they have a lot of
different options but as soon as you get outside the US and this is kind of
transitioning over to some of the things that Google does better those options
disappear there is a stark contrast between the services available in the US
with Amazon and the services available even in Canada just across that border
here there's a big differential and you're going to find that so kind of
moving over here the Google Nest hub max is a lot better internationally and I'm
I'm in Canada but I can just see it through the people and their common
here on YouTube lots of the features although people get really frustrated at
Google when they don't give you some feature internationally they're doing
much better and there's a number of different indices around that see the
music and even some of the video services really don't change over here
and while Google doesn't have as many options necessarily they're showing up
in all the countries and the other thing is the language differential I mean they
have so many languages over here on the Google assistant they can translate
languages and that kind of transitions into their other big power which is all
these different services that they have we all know they have Google search but
not only does that power the device but then they go ahead and they utilize
things like that Google translation capability right onboard here they use
finance they use news they use all of their different services and their music
and YouTube and I mean there's a ton here that Google has access to that they
put right into this device you're utilizing all of their services but
you're getting a lot of power out of that another big thing is Google Maps
and it is much improved over here I get that navigation every morning or I get
told kind of what my route is on my commute every morning so that's great
now the Google assistant itself is really a service and this has become a
huge service and it is the better voice assistant of the two there's a couple of
ways that Amazon does things better we talked about those but in general the
Google assistant is way more accurate and it's it's even more conversational
it's getting more conversational and we've seen some of these improvements at
Google i/o and these other events where Google has really shown their strength
in software and that's what that's based on this is really a piece of software a
massive piece of software but it's really good over here
I think the app for controlling these devices is much better over here and
overall the visual interface on the nest hub max is just better as well they've
done a better job in creating those visual interfaces for
you there's also much deeper integration with Android devices and so you have a
lot of these Android devices that have really the same experience as this on it
in a lot of ways with the Google assistant and some other basic things
like the clock on an Android device being Google assisting capable and being
able to set alarms for you on that smartphone or on these or controlling
your smart home in general so lots of good integration there with Android and
getting better all the time now I haven't even talked about kind of
device specific things there's a nest camera on this and that gives you access
to full nest security camera features now you'd have to pay for a subscription
service if you want the cloud recordings but it's still a full nest cam even
without that that just doesn't record video it'll still tell you when
someone's in your home that isn't supposed to be there and when you're out
and about and then the Google duo video calling is really really powerful over
here this camera actually follows you around the room within about a hundred
and twenty seven degrees that's the field of view that they have but it will
actually follow zoom in and out as you get closer and and further away from the
camera with that camera comes a couple of new features like facial recognition
where I get all kinds of information on this device when I just look at it and
then also on top of that I have the new gesture capability which allows me to
start and stop music or stop timers from ringing or alarms from ringing just by
bringing up my hand and this is actually a really powerful component of how I'm
using this device on a daily basis now and Amazon really has nothing on that
front kind of deepening that facial recognition capability in the voice
recognition capability is some of the ways Google has figured out that we need
to personalize these devices to different people and so not only can I
get kind of some of those personalized recommendations when I look at the
screen or ask it for anything but I can also set reminders for other people in
my home and this is just an entry point into
what Google is going to do in terms of personalization and help with
communication in the home you can see facial recognition being a really key
component to all of them google has chromecast built in and they're really
the initiating casting service out there or at least the biggest one and well we
talked about the fire TV sticks being the best there's also some real benefits
to being chromecast capable you know I can get Netflix onto this device it
takes a bit of a workaround but I can do it and on top of that I think as we see
stadia come out you're going to see this show up on that device and that's not a
guarantee by any means so you have all these differences and some of them will
be minor to you and some of them will be a big deal but really what you're doing
when you buy one of these devices is you're buying into an ecosystem and
these two companies are playing different games see Amazon in the last
two years has at least it's it's got to be well over 50 Amazon voice assistant
enabled products that they've put out just themselves and this doesn't account
for all of their partners and yeah it's it's a massive number of products so you
can now find their voice assistant everywhere throughout your home and you
can even find it in your car and nowadays you can even find it on you you
look at the products that they just put out in their Hardware event there's a
ring that can go on your hand there's a set of eyeglasses that you can buy as
well you have giant speakers that really
compared to some of the speakers they put out last year with the echo studio
that that has an echo sub in it and then additional speakers but so what they're
doing is they're kind of building something that fits into every spot in
your home and I think what they're doing in a lot of cases is providing you a
very similar experience with their voices system which isn't a bad
experience it's a great experience but it's all over the place and you're going
to have all these options to utilizing that with different products throughout
your home Google on the other hand has been a
more measured with their product release but not so measured with the release of
features with their Google assistant and I mean this is what they're great at
they're a software company really through and through so their products
are you know few and far between by comparison and as they focus on this
voice assistant you see some real jumps every year I mean when we look at Google
i/o the last couple of years there are moments in those events that I still
remember when when I watched the person well sorry not the person when I watched
the Google assistant make a reservation I mean that was so powerful and well
that's not fully rolled out all over the world it is available in the US right
now in a lot of places this year I remember watching the ladies sit there
and she was rattling off commands to that Google assistant so quickly and it
was all locally executing on the phone very very powerful stuff and this this
is what we're going to continue to see out of Google taking the hardware
they've produced and really very similar hardware when you get down to the nuts
and bolts and really accentuating it or making it
that much better with their software capability so from a platform
perspective I really don't think you can make a bad choice its Amazon and Google
and they're both making a serious play to be the center of your smart home and
they both have different methods of going about it but both have great
options now you're here for me to give you a clear indication on which one I
would choose for my home and which one I think you should choose as well in the
end there's one thing that I always come back to here and while the hardware is
fantastic over here on Amazon's device I always find a little bit of extra
refinement in the devices from Google and this is no exception there's a
little bit extra refinement over here and lots of that comes from their
software capability and I do think that's really important because in the
end these have processors these have storage space
these have circuit boards they have speakers and really I mean what what
they can put into these devices are gonna be relatively similar over the
years there's really not much of a differential so in the end the
differentiator is how good they are at producing software and there is no doubt
in my mind that Google is the better software company by far and Amazon is
doing a lot to catch up but right now when I look ahead I see the extra
capabilities the extra functions that I want to live my life and to automate my
life showing up over here now clearly this one is so close that a lot of you
are going to need some other information to make a decision now I have playlists
for both of these devices that will show you those features show you these
capabilities that I've talked about in this video so both of those playlists
are up on screen now otherwise guys thanks for watching and of course don't
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