What’s the fuss over smart speakers? Canadians find out
Google Home can play music and tell you the weather. Just ask it
“Hello Google. Welcome to Canada. Any idea when your competitors, the Amazon Echo and Apple’s HomePod, are coming here?”
This is one of the many questions I’ve asked Google Home, the first voice-activated smart speaker available in Canada, when I brought it home for a test drive last week.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you with that, but I’m learning,” came the response.
Smart speakers are one of the hottest technology categories in the U.S. right now, led by Amazon’s Alexa line of products, proving that voice control is going to become an ever more popular way to interact with your technology.
Smart speakers are basically speakers that you can talk to — which doesn’t seem all that impressive, or particularly useful, until you actually use one.
They have to be connected to your WiFi network to work, and also require a phone or tablet or PC for setup and changing preferences.
Amazon’s success has inspired the biggest companies to launch their own competitors, with Google Home available in the U.S. since last November, and Apple recently announcing its Homepod on the way later this year.
The devices can play and control music, and even video if it’s connected to a screen. It can serve as a smart home hub and do a number of useful household tasks, like setting alarms and timers, accessing your schedule in online calendars and quickly consulting the web to answer queries.
So what’s taken the tech so long to get here? The reported holdup with the Canadian market is French-language support — and the smaller size of the market doesn’t help either. But Google Home, at last, launches on Monday here, and after testing it out for almost a week, it’s easy to see how smart speakers are bound to be huge over the next few years.
All I need to do is look at my 5-year-old daughter who is given to fits of laughter, constantly asking Google Home what different animals sound like. An elephant’s roar from a sentient speaker never seems to get old. For her generation, one day, speakers that you can’t talk to will seem like relics. As with infants who use an iPad and think every picture is a touchscreen, or kids who see a nondigital camera and wonder how to instantly see the image, smart speakers will simply be the norm soon enough. They truly seem to be the beginning of what has been called ubiquitous computing, the idea that technology isn’t at a sitdown machine, but all around us in our “everyday technology.” That said, we are still very much at the beginning of this road, and while Google Home can offer delights and some ease of use, there are a few annoying things, particularly how the tech giant is launching the product here.
First off, no matter what, you are going to wish this thing was smarter. Just like if you’ve ever hit a dead end with Siri, the baked-in Google Assistant can impress, but there are lots of things it can’t do, and will only get better as it is updated and improved. The “I’m sorry” response happens a lot, if it doesn’t understand your query or hits its limits.
It is very good with cueing up your music, podcasts and radio, as well as setting timers. I am now in the habit of asking it for the weather and getting on-demand news reports to start my day, and the sources can be modified within the companion app, which was worked on by Google’s engineers in Waterloo.
As well, despite launching in the U.S. last year, and being steadily improved since, the version launching in Canada is the starter version, with those newer features expected to come at some point in the future. For instance, in the U.S., Google Home can make phone calls. Here? No. Those improvements are only a soft- ware update away, but we don’t know when it’s coming, and if you’ve read glowing reviews in the U.S., you may be disappointed.
One of the strange things is that while it now does have Frenchlanguage support, users will have to pick a default language as opposed to being able to switch on-the-fly between this country’s two official languages.
As well, another thing to keep in mind is that these smart speakers are part of a format war of sorts, since they are designed to work best with the parent company’s products, as well as some third-party partnerships. So Google Home works great with that company’s suite of products, but doesn’t support its competitors. For example, for streaming music it works with Google Play Music and Spotify, but not Apple Music or Tidal.
As well, if you really want to get the most out of Google Home, you are likely going to want to also shell out for a Google Chromecast, because once that is hooked into your TV and linked with your account, you can control Netflix, YouTube and Google Photos on the big screen with your voice.
Despite my misgivings about what it can’t do yet, Google Home works very well, and while we are just getting past the phase of considering it a fun toy to pass the time at my home, it has already started to worm its way into several household tasks. As a music fan, I find voice navigation decent. It is already good in the kitchen, with timers and quick conversions, although I can’t wait until it can read recipes, like it can in the U.S. The speaker itself is OK, although I wish its top volume were louder. But sound quality isn’t the reason to shell out $179 for this device. It’s for the myriad of other things it can do, like being an excellent on-demand elephant noise maker.