Is Google Home Better Than The Amazon Echo? (Google Home Review)
Skills
The Echo has been around for almost 2 years longer than the Google Home though and with that comes a few advantages. Besides the home integration and IFTTT that I mentioned earlier, Echo also has Skills. These are essentially apps for the Echo that third-party developers create using the Echo API to extend its functionality.
You can test your Harry Potter knowledge, have it tell you facts about cats, and so on. Now, I personally don’t use any of these cause I think they’re a bit of a gimmick, others might actually enjoy them and Google will most likely not integrate these into Google Home, at least not like this.
Conclusion
Overall, Alexa wins with the speaker quality, but only just; Echo has skills, that I never use; and you can technically say Alexa faster than OK, Google.
Besides those things though, it’s about $50 more expensive than the Home, it has more integration than the Home at the moment for Home Automation (but that will undoubtable change in the next few months or so), and it can’t answer questions like Google can. On top of that, Google will supposedly learn from you using it’s AI and Google Assistant (and even more so if you also use Google Assistant on your phone) and will become further and further integrated with your phone for even more possible scenarios that it can help in.
Thinking of what Home will be soon versus what it and Echo are now, it’s hard to not suggest the Home over the Alexa for someone looking.
I just purchased the home. Waiting for delivery but I’m excited about it. Personally I think Wikipedia is a wonderful tool plus I am a subscriber to Google Play Music. I really think this will develop much faster than the Echo. So we will see!!
Agreed, I love being able to ask my Home questions. It even grabs them from other sites, not just Wikipedia too 🙂
Tell your Echo, “Play Christmas Music”. She’ll immediately assume Amazon Music since that is the default music player (same goes with Play any music). In order to get her to play Spotify Music instead you need to specify Spotify. “Alexa, play Christmas Music on Spotify”.
The difference with Home is you can set Spotify as the default music player and then whenever you say “Hey Google, play Christmas Music.” It’ll automatically use Spotify to do so.
That’s what I am referring to.