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Even from three rooms away, both were able to hear and understand me. In my opinion, while the Google Home's speaker sounds fine, it's not stereo or anywhere near audiophile quality. I found it to be too bass-heavy and there is no way to adjust any audio EQ settings. It's OK for listening to news radio, but it's not great for heavy music listeners.
The Nest Audio is more akin to a portable Bluetooth-style speaker. Google’s largest and most powerful smart display is the best one we’ve tested for Google Assistant. It has a clear screen, a built-in camera and we were impressed that its facial recognition means it can personalise the reminders and messages you see when you look at the screen.
What Smart Display Size Screen Do You Need?
However, if we use a Southern accent, both devices ban us from accessing personal information. Both devices can also help out in the kitchen by providing recipes, measurement conversions, and setting multiple timers. For example, you can set a timer for your pasta, your sauce, and a third for your garlic bread. It can access recipes without an additional skill or app and guide you through the steps in an interactive manner. For example, it will give you one recipe step and then wait until you’re ready to move onto the next. But as each platform comes into its own, it becomes more and more complicated to assess.
It has the biggest screen (15 inches with a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution), and unlike the other smart displays it isn't designed to sit on a desk, counter, or nightstand. The Echo Show 15 is for wall-mounting, serving as a stealthy home hub that looks like a framed picture when not in use and a widget-filled control panel when active. However, we wouldn’t want to listen to music streamed from either device and we can’t imagine that Echo Gen 2 will change our mind.
Personal and Kitchen Assistant Battle
It doesn’t have a camera so it’s not for video calls, but it works with a lot of streaming services for watching shows or, more realistically, checking a recipe video on YouTube. When making your choice, the most important element is high sound quality, a powerful voice technique, and appealing design. These things together form the device’s user interface and will influence how much you end up interacting with the speaker. In acting as a personal assistant, it depends on what’s important to you.
Another feature we like is the option to show curated photos from Google Earth and artwork when the screen's not in use. This is in addition to drawing from your Google Photos collection. Despite these strengths, the one you choose ultimately boils down to personal preference. Smart Thermostat Enhanced preheats or precools your home before you arrive, so it’s the perfect temperature the moment you walk in.
Is Alexa better than Google?
If I had to pick a winner for intelligence, I would go with Google Home. Its response time to my queries and commands was noticeably faster than Alexa's. We're probably talking milliseconds, here, but it was enough that I could tell the difference. While setting an alarm one night, I accidentally told Google Home to go off at 7 p.m., instead of 7 a.m. But the device was easily able to make the correction when I realized my mistake. When I reenacted this same command error with Alexa, it did not go as smoothly.
Alexa has an edge with third-party functionality, thanks to thousands of different skills that can do everything from order pizza to read a bedtime story. It tends to require very specific syntax, though, especially when activating and using most of those skills. It makes Alexa a bit hard to talk to unless you get used to phrasing requests how Alexa wants to receive them. Good Housekeeping participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.
When you factor in hardware, software, privacy and everything in between, which platform really is the best? It's time to take a deep dive -- and we'll start our comparison by looking at the entry-level smart speakers in each camp. Google Home comes with the company’s own virtual personal assistant Google Assistant. The service is generally powerful, allowing you to perform a variety of tasks, including turning on your lights and accessing your music. Google goes out of its way to boost Assistant’s appeal by getting it to understand the many ways you may say things. In turn, that usually creates fewer instances of times when Assistant fails to understand you and says it can’t answer your question.
Using an external speaker for the Echo Dot doesn't override the microphone, so you can use Alexa as normal while it's hooked up to the speaker of your choice. I synched mine to my stereo A/V system, and it was my favorite set up when comparing the two devices. Perhaps ironically, the cheapest device gave me the best options for better audio. With Frontpoint, you can ask Alexa or Google Assistant to arm your security system and also control some of your connected smart home products.
Skills can be handy, but the vast majority are more gimmicky than useful, and you still need to dance around Alexa's syntax to use them. Today's HighlightsSelect stories from the Monitor that empower and uplift. Create a free account to receive new coupons for your favorites apps every week. A life goal is to make people's lives better by giving solutions to their problems through apps.
I like Google's calling functionality better in theory -- the feature isn't live yet -- as it's easier to call anyone, whether or not they have a Home. We'll be testing both extensively to see which device is the better communicator in practice. The Echo also lets you set reminders and make to-do lists, and the Google Home still falls short at a few of those sorts of basic tasks. It doesn't, for instance, let you change anything on your calendar yet.
For music, we prefer Echo Dot connected to a Bluetooth Bose Soundlink. If you don’t own a Bluetooth speaker, Echo Dot also has an audio jack. To compare, Google Home Mini, Google’s version of Echo Dot, can also stream to a Bluetooth speaker but lacks an audio jack. Also, Bluetooth streaming via Google Home is a new feature and many users, including us, are finding that the connection is spotty. If you want a powerful speaker, you should also consider the $399.00 Google Home Max or even Sonos, which you can control using Alexa. Alexa, on the other hand, relies on the installation of skills – individual, app-like sets of related voice commands focussing on certain topics or abilities.
There are also small differences to be noticed in the sound quality. If you want to play music directly with the devices rather than connecting to external speakers, Google Home offers a fuller, more rounded sound. However, Google’s AI voice sounds a bit more mechanical than the Echo’s AI voice, and Google Home’s volume capacity is a few decibels lower than Echo’s. Then there's the Echo Show 15, currently the largest first-party smart display out there.
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