Google Home VS. Amazon Echo, which one deserve your money??

Smart homes are one of the 21st-century luxuries which make the life much easier with a wide variety of things to do and control without making any effort. But, even if you buy dozens of smart home gadgets, you can’t actually start building your smart home without getting a smart assistant to help you control all the smart gadgets.

Here you have to choose between the best two smart assistants right now, “Alexa” or “Google Assistant”? Here is how the two leading voice-assistants are competing in audio quality, voice assistance, smart home control and much more.

Both devices are getting smarter

While Amazon took the early lead to be released first, Google upgraded its products and added Google Home to compete with Amazon, especially now with its second generation of the Echo in the market which came with a lot of new updates. Considering that both assistants are receiving more updates than the average consumer gadget, the two devices are getting smarter and smarter. So which one is better: the $99 Amazon Echo or the $129 Google Home?

The Voice Assistant

Both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have improved into an excellent voice-assistant but with slightly different features. For example, when it comes to third-party products, Amazon Alexa supports a bit more products than Google Assistant does but on the other hand, Google Assistant lets you upload your own music to its cloud.

When talking with Alexa, you have to take care while choosing your words and you have to stick to its syntax, while Google Assistant is much easier to use or, at least it’s less frustrating. Giving Google Assistant different combination of words will probably result in a useful response. But if you master Alexa’s words and phrases you can get to more skills, information as well as some other third-party features. It is more likely that you would be able to have a conversation with Google Assistant than with Alexa. Alexa would lose the track of the conversation by the second or the third sentence, but Google Assistant would keep up with you.

When it comes to the sound, Google Assistant would probably win. Google speaker sounds better, with two male and female themes, while Alexa comes with one female theme. But, with the 3.5mm output jack in all Amazon Echo models, you can choose any third-party speaker and connect it to your Echo with no effort mentioned. Besides that, Alexa is available on more third-party speakers than Google Assistant.

The Design

When we compare Google Home with the previous version of Amazon Echo, Google Home would win the design battle for sure. But Amazon raised the stakes with the second generation of the Echo. Whereas the first Echo was so basic looking, the second generation comes with an elegant design and a variety of choices. You can choose between six designs and three materials: two wood and one metallic design, allowing you to choose the color and the material that suits your home better.

The Google Home comes in one curvier design, that, according to Google “was inspired by wine glasses and candles”. Its bottom case that covers the speaker can be removed and swapped with different cases to match your furniture. There are six different cases which can be fabric or metallic and in different colors. The top is sloping down and has four LEDs that react while the assistant is listening to you.

Both units have physical buttons, but the Echo has more buttons than the Google Home. If you need to control the sound, you have two buttons in the Echo, while all you need to do is to swipe on a touch panel with Google Home. But, there is also one mute button on the back of the Home. Both devices have far-field technology microphones which should be able to pick up your voice from across the room.

Music

Soundwise, the Home would win the battle: it provides better sound quality than the Echo. Both units support a lot of apps like Spotify, Pandora, and TuneIn. And, of course, Google Home support Google Play Music and Youtube Red, while Amazon Echo supports Amazon Music.

Google Home also allows you to upload your own music to its cloud. Amazon users used to be able to do that as well but the service was canceled in the new generation (and the existing users will be cut off in 2019). This would make Google Home a better choice for you if you can’t find your favorite music online that easy.

You can find a 3.5mm out jack in the Amazon Echo but not in Google Home, which gives more points to the Echo. However, you can still connect both devices to any Bluetooth speaker which fix the problem for Google Home.

Smart Home

As explained in the introduction, it is an essential thing when build your smart home to get a smart assistant. A few months ago the answer to the question “which one should I buy” was obvious: it was Amazon Echo for sure.

There was a huge gap between the two devices when it comes to supporting third-party brands, but Google worked hard and successfully minimized that gap. Right now both devices support the biggest names in smart homes world like Nest Thermostat, Samsung SmartThings, and Philips Hue Lights. Even though Google Home does not support every brand, it will connect to any device that has Chromecast attached to it. That would make both devices pretty equal so far, but with the ReVamp app from Amazon, The Echo would take the advantage. This app lets you control all your smart gadgets, for example, turn on and off the Hue lamps and control their brightness level. But the app still needs a lot of updates.

Both units support routines, for example, when you say “goodbye” they will shut down the lights, turn off the TV and your heating system. Both can connect to your smart TV, but Google Home has the advantage of Youtube here, which is not stable on Amazon Echo due to the competition between the two companies.

The Conclusion

The choice between the two devices is a hard one. Both are great and are competing to be the best. From our review, we can say that Amazon Echo is better if you are searching for a smart assistant to control your smart gadgets, but dealing with Alexa can be bit difficult and sometimes even annoying. On the other hand, Google Assistant is easier to deal with and we can say it’s smarter when it comes to practice. However, as a smart home assistant, Alexa would do more things for you.

At the end, if you choose to buy either of the two devices, you wouldn’t regret your decision, because both devices are there to help you and make your daily life easier. At the end, if you buy either of the two devices, you wouldn’t regret your decision. Both of them are designed to help you and make your daily life easier.

here is a video comparing between the two products:

Read also: Lenovo Smart Display, the new smart display from Google

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