The slight downside for the Echo is that this feature doesn’t currently work with Spotify, though that’s apparently coming soon. And on the Home, it’s in ‘Devices’ then ‘Create Group’. On the Echo, you just go to Audio Groups in settings and choose ‘multi-room music’.
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Thanks to a recent update that gives the Echo multi-room music powers, both speakers can also voice control your house-wide tunes. On its own, the Echo has slightly better sound quality at higher volumes. If you’re undecided about what to listen to, both also let you request music by genre or an activity like cooking, which is handy for discovering new music. Functionality-wise, they’re very similar, allowing you to control music, save songs to your library and verbally request specific playlists like Discover Weekly. If, like most people we know, you use Spotify, then either option is fair game. The same goes for Amazon Prime Music and the Echo. If you’re a Google Play Music subscriber then Google Home is the only option you’ve got. Music is one of the main features both Google and Amazon are touting for their smart speakers.Īt its simplest, the best option depends on which music streaming service you use. So does Google Home still have the musical edge? Updated 30/8/17: the Amazon Echo now supports multi-room music. Winner: Amazon Echo (just) – Amazon’s speaker plays nice with a few more devices and services, but it’s very close Marvellous.īoth Google Home and the Echo also support custom commands though IFTTT, and while SmartThings can get most things done on Google Home, if you’re after a little more flexibility, then Alexa on the Echo is the best choice for smart homes (but only just).
This is truly the pinnacle of human laziness. Both let you control robot vacuums with your voice (they each support Neato Botvac Connected, with Alexa also playing nice with iRobot Roomba’s range). In short, the two are now very evenly matched.
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In the UK it supports smart lighting from Philips Hue and LIFX, smart heating from Nest, Tado, Honeywell and recently Hive, hubs including Samsung’s SmartThings and Wink, security devices from Ring and August, plus an array of plugs and switches from WeMo, TP-Link and Insignia Connect. Google Home has recently upped its smart home game in a big way. The future is here – we have the ability to control our lights, our heating, and appliances, with nothing but our voices, and smart speakers are at the heart of it all. One of the biggest selling points of a smart speaker like the Echo or Home, is their ability to act as a central voice-controlled hub for your entire house. Winner: Google Home – if knowledge is power, Google Home is the Hulk of the smart speaker universe. While it can go to to toe with Google’s Assistant for simple word definitions too, it’s clear that Google’s gigantic, all-powerful search background definitely gives it the edge if you’re after a hands-free search engine. What about funner things though? The sort of questions curious young minds might ask?Īsking both AI assistants if snakes can climb up walls – a question that plagued us as young children – for example, results in a very satisfactory answer from Google’s Assistant (yes, some snakes can climb walls, if there is sufficient grip on offer), but Alexa had no idea what we were talking about once again, offering no help whatsoever.Īlexa occasionally matches its Google rival, and gave us a solid answer when asked if there was water on Mars, but it fails pretty miserably compared to the Google Assistant almost every single time – including the query “do insects have brains?” We might as well have asked a piece of charred toast. Talk about detail, eh?Īs for Alexa? No idea. That match, by the way, was between HHH and Kane. When asked who won the first World Wrestling Federation championship, Google Assistant not only gave us a name, but explained how the original belt and Intercontinental belt were merged in the early 2000s to form the heavyweight championship belt. Make things a little more complicated though, and Google’s Assistant easily comes out on top.
Asking the weight of Dwayne Johnson, for example, returned successful results, though Alexa went above and beyond by automatically offering the big man’s weight in both imperial and metric. General, simple queries seem to be in the bag for both assistants too. Ours isn’t great at the best of times, so an instant helping hand is very welcome.īoth Alexa and Google’s Assistant can handle pretty much any sum you care to throw at them, from basic multiplication to square roots and percentages. They are called smart speakers, after all.įirst up, maths.
Before we jump into anything else, let’s tackle how clever Google Home and Amazon Echo really are.