Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Home review”.
Google has become indispensable, it’s the first place. You go whenever you need to find information on anything. It’S on our computers, it’s on our phones, sometimes even in our cars and on our wrists. Now Google wants to be in our homes and apartments, and it’s new 129 dollar, Google, home voice-activated speaker. It’S exactly how it’s doing now, it’s impossible to talk about Google home without also talking about Amazon’s echo and they are very similar.
Both are voice-activated connected smart speakers. I can play music control, a bunch of smart home devices, add things to your to-do list or shopping list and do a bunch of web searches all with just your voice. Now Google has further ambitions for home that go beyond what Amazon is currently doing. But let’s start with the device itself, the home is shorter and squatter than the echo and, to be honest, it looks a lot like an air freshener.
I don’t really think that’s a bad thing. It makes it really easy to integrate in home and it doesn’t stick out like an obvious piece of gadgetry. Now it’s only available in white, but you can buy various fabric and metal shells to customize it to your home. Decor, on top is a touch panel to let you control volume, play or pause your music and activate the speaker’s listening feature now integrated into this panel are far-field microphones, so it can hear you from across the room.
You can activate it with just your voice by saying: ok, Google or hey Google, and it can even hear you when you’re playing music or other audio and as a smart speaker. The home is pretty much just as good as the echo it gets surprisingly loud and can fill a room with sound and in addition to the built-in sources of Google YouTube, music, Pandora and Spotify. You can cast audio to it from your phone or your laptop.
Hey. Google Play might discover weekly, alright playing your spotify playlist co-discoverer weekly. Hey Google skip this track. It’S not the kind of speaker, you’d use to drive a house party, but for everyday listening, it’s perfectly fine! Now, if you do want more power, you can set the home’s audio to a chromecast Audio, that’s connected to a larger speaker. You just say: hey, Google play this music on chromecast Audio and the audio will just shift right over.
You can also pair multiple home units together and simultaneously play music through all of them. In addition, Google’s also added the ability to send video from the home to a chromecast we’ll play the rogue one trailer on the chromecast sure playing rogue one trailer from YouTube on chromecast. This is still very limited. It only works with YouTube right now.
Now. Finally, the home can also control smart home gadgets right now. It supports nest, Phillips hue and smart things, which means you can control your thermostat, your lights and other gadgets with just your voice. Now I’ve used this a lot and I found that the home is a little bit more reliable than the echo for doing this.
I usually only have to ask it once to do its thing, but the biggest thing that sets the home apart is the fact that it’s Google search engine and algorithms powering it. That means you can ask in many of the same things you ask Google on the computer and get similar results: hey Google! How long would it take me to walk to San Francisco on foot? The trip to San Francisco is 40 days in one hour, even better. Google, home can remember the context of what you asked it. The President of the United States of America is Barack Obama – hey Google.
When was he born? He was born on August 4th 1961, hey Google, who was the president before him, George, W Bush? According to the Telegraph 43 George W Bush January 20th, 2001 January 20th, 2009 Republican presidents at work, where was he born? He was born in New Haven Connecticut. Now the only thing that really spoils this experience is, you have to say, ok, Google, before each and every question you ask, but like the video casting features, the homes assistant is more limited than you might expect. For starters, it only works with one.
Google account at a time – and that makes it really hard to use it as a family device. So if my wife asks Google home to add something to a to-do list, it gets added to my to-do list and my devices, not hers. Google says that it is working on this and it does plan to add multiple account support in the future. I also can’t use the homes assistant to do things I’m used to doing on my phone, such as sending messages or making phone calls. Hey. Google send a message to dieter. I think I’m going to be late. Sorry, I can’t send messages. Yet. Google really wants its home to be the access point to its services in your house for all those times when your hands are full or you’re, not looking at a screen and right now, it’s mostly just a better echo. It’S easier to set up. It looks a little nicer and it’s a little bit more reliable, but it’s easy to see the potential here. How Google can leverage its existing services and search powers to go way beyond what Amazon is doing, but then the question remains: are you ready to have an always listening, Google bot in your house, integrating oh Jesus, Christ or, I could say, hey Google play some Halloween Music for a spooky night, that’s really lame.
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