Is Google’s smart speaker as clever as it thinks it is?
FOR Easy to use; Chromecast; good design; pairing capability AGAINST Few apps; average sound; limited smart home use
There’s a fight on for control of your home. In one corner of the ring is Amazon’s Alexa, already installed in Echo and Echo Dot devices, which sold by the bucket-load last Christmas. In the opposite corner is Google Home, now available in the UK.
Both devices make a similar promise: to connect with multiple apps (or ‘skills’ as Amazon calls them) bringing voice control to your home entertainment, online search and a range of home-automation devices such as lighting and heating.
Amazon has had a head start, with around 1000 companies announcing Alexa integration into numerous devices at CES in January. Now Google has arrived, and is playing catch-up.
Modern and minimal
Google Home is smaller than the taller, cylindrical Amazon Echo, and looks a bit like a large air freshener. It’s a minimalist design, with a touch-sensitive circle on the top for adjusting the volume and pausing/ playing music. There are also a series of coloured lights that illuminate when the device is active, and a mute button if you want to turn the two microphones off. To personalise the device you can add one of the optional coloured bases, either in fabric (£18) or metal (£36).
The UK launch didn't quite go to plan for Google. The company hit the headlines when Burger King ran a TV advertisement that caused any Google Home speaker in the vicinity to read out the Wikipedia entry for a Whopper by asking "Okay Google, what is the Whopper burger?”
Some irreverent editing of that Wikipedia entry caused Google a fair amount of embarrassment but, as the saying goes, “all publicity is good publicity” – Google Home is certainly being talked about now.
Set-up simplicity
Set-up is straightforward: just plug in, download the Google Home app to your IOS or Android device and follow the simple instructions to connect Google Home to your wi-fi network. It won’t take you long.
Then it’s just a matter of connecting to your Google account and adding any compatible smart devices, such as Philips Hue lights. There’s support for Samsung Smartthings, IFTTT (If That Then This) and Wemo devices too. You can also link Google Home to Spotify Premium, Tunein Radio, BBC iplayer, Google Play Music, Deezer, 7Digital Music and Musixmatch.
The ‘wake’ phrase is either ‘Hey Google’ or ‘Okay Google’, neither of which sounds quite as natural as just saying ‘Alexa’. We prefer the sound of Alexa’s voice to that of Google Home, which, although it has a British accent, sounds a bit mechanical.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that Google Home doesn’t yet have anything like the number of compatible apps that Amazon’s Echo does, at least not in the UK. There’s no support for Hive heating systems, Uber, National Rail Enquiries or EDF Energy accounts for example, all four of which we use regularly with Alexa.
But where Google Home scores over Amazon’s Echo is in its compatibility with Google Chromecast devices. We add a Chromecast Ultra to our Samsung TV and Google Home has no trouble connecting with it and following our commands to cast Youtube videos directly to the TV from an ipad. We ask it to play a random video from Youtube, and are amused to see it immediately choose a showdown between Google Home and Amazon Echo! No prizes for guessing which came out on top.
If you have a Netflix subscription you could, say, ask Google to search for The
Crown and start playing that. You can also stream music directly from your phone or tablet to the Home.
One other advantage Google Home has over the Echo is its multi-room capability: you can link two Homes together in a room to make a stereo pair, or multiple ones around the house so they can all play the same music simultaneously. Our one caveat here is that using voice control to activate them pushes them out of sync. Grouping seems to work effectively only if you go through the relevant app.
Connecting Home to our Philips Hue lighting system is straightforward. Go to ‘Home control’ in the Google app menu, then ‘devices’ and click on ‘add your smart devices’. Once it has found your Philips Hue hub it will then ask you to assign specific lights to specific rooms so you can ask it to turn on, say, just the lights in the kitchen.
Search warrant
Outside your four walls, the Google Home links you to the entire world of Google search, and this is where it comes into its own. You can ask it anything and it will tap into the vast resources of search, maps, translation and so on to provide the answer. Want the latest news from the BBC, The
Guardian or Daily Telegraph? No problem. the Telegraph has even launched a dedicated audio show, 5 by 5, specifically for Google Home. The daily 10-minute news show features five of its journalists discussing five hot topics of the day.
Ask Google Home about the weather, traffic, sports or to set an alarm, and it's on it – yet it won't connect to our Google calendar. All we get is “I can’t help you with that”. A quick Google search (the irony) reveals we are far from alone in having this
problem. It turns out that Home can’t handle work Google accounts, only personal ones, which is rather annoying.
What’s more, the Home doesn’t integrate with Google’s other services such as Gmail, Google Docs and Google Voice. Still, if you want a recipe for a cake, need to know where the nearest petrol station is or even want Google to tell you a joke, it will duly oblige. We set Spotify as our default music service and voice searches for a variety of artists and albums proves to be no problem.
Sound quality
Google says the Home “delivers crystal clear highs and rich bass for hi-fi sound that streams over wi-fi,” but we’d take that claim with a pinch of salt. This is not a hi-fi speaker in the traditional sense – given its compact dimensions, it would be unrealistic to expect too much.
Inside the base of the unit is a 50mm speaker and a pair of 50mm passive radiators. There’s support for multiple audio formats, including AAC, MP3, Vorbis, WAV (LPCM), FLAC and Opus.
Songs on Radio 2 are delivered with a reasonable amount of energy, but Maybe by Emeli Sandé on Spotify reveals a thin, bright edge to the treble and a woolly bass. UE'S competitive (£80) Roll Bluetooth speaker has a sweeter sound.
You probably shouldn’t buy Google Home as your primary music system, but there’s much more to it than that. If you want a basic plug ’n’ play voice-control assistant that takes charge of your smart home and doubles as a simple, affordable multi-room audio and video system, then it has its place.
Google says it is working on compatibility with a wider range of apps and services, including Bluetooth, but until then Alexa has the edge. Given that Sonos is working on full Alexa integration, due for release later this year, and that the Amazon Echo already has Bluetooth for streaming to better-quality speakers, Amazon has, for the time being at least, stolen a march on Google in the voice-control arena.
“The Google Home links you to the entire world of Google search. If you want a recipe, need to know where the nearest petrol station is, or even want it to tell you a joke, it will oblige”