Weigh what features are important to you

Sarah Kovac

Safety can be a major concern if you’re a caretaker for someone with a disability or have a parent aging in place. It’s important to have measures that allow people to live independently, while still keeping them safe. But how can you accomplish this? Smart assistants, like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, offer features and integrations that can make life a little safer for anyone. Still, they’re even more useful in the homes of vulnerable individuals. How? Can Alexa call 911? Sort of. Let’s explore that and more of the best smart speaker features you can use to keep your loved ones – and yourself – safe. If you have an Amazon Echo speaker in your house, you might already have access to more safety features than you realize.

Alexa

Here’s where the question, “Can Alexa call 911?” comes into play. Emergency Assist is Amazon’s suite of home security features. With Emergency Assist, you can say, “Alexa, call for help.” This command summons an Urgent Response agent, who can quickly send first responders (fire, police, or ambulance) your way.

Not only that, but the Urgent Response agent can give the first responder information you previously entered into the Emergency Assist area of the Alexa app. This may include your gate code, information about medical conditions, pets on the premises or anything else pertinent. The agent can even tell the first responder where the call came from — specific to the room your Echo speaker has been assigned in the Alexa app.

Emergency Assist costs $5.99 per month or $59 per year if you’re a Prime member. Non-members can sign up, but the fee jumps to $7.99 monthly. Alexa Emergency Assist

From $6 per month at Amazon

Drop-in feature

If you need help from someone in your house, Alexa’s Drop-in feature is the perfect solution – and it’s free.

Well, sort of. You need to have more than one Alexa speaker, but they’re often deeply discounted during sale events like Prime Day and Black Friday. Even on a non-sale day, you can get a small Echo Pop speaker with Alexa for around $30.

Amazon’s Echo Pop speaker is affordable and can connect you to emergency services with just a voice command.

Once you have the hardware, you can use your Alexa speakers like a two-way intercom system. “Alexa, drop in everywhere,” will open up communication between the speaker you’re using and any other speakers in the house. You can also drop into specific rooms if you assign each speaker a name and location in the Alexa app. For example, you could say, “Alexa, drop in on Mom’s room,” or, “Alexa, drop in on the kitchen.”

Drop-In is a good feature if someone needs to call out for help or if you’d like to check in on someone without physically invading their space.

With the proper settings enabled, you can use this feature to connect speakers in different homes. So, if you wanted to check on a parent aging in place, you could drop in on their speaker and begin talking to them.

Amazon’s Echo Pop

$31 at Walmart

Announcements

The announcement feature is more like a traditional intercom system and allows you to broadcast a message to all Alexa speakers in the house (or in a connected house).

If you need to get a message to everyone quickly, announcing is the way to go. “Alexa, announce ‘Can someone bring me more toilet paper?’ ”

Calls and messages

While Alexa cannot directly call 911 for you without the Emergency Assist subscription, it can call your contacts with a simple voice command.

You can use your Alexa device to call someone from your contacts, call a number you ask for digit by digit, or even make a group call. You create and name a group in the Alexa app, and then you can use the voice command, “Alexa, call my sisters,” or whatever the group may be.

Emergency calling

While Google Assistant cannot call 911 by default, a Nest Aware subscription enables it within the Google Home app on your phone. Emergency calling from a Google device connects you directly to the 911 call center closest to you (whereas Alexa can connect you to an Urgent Response agent who can contact emergency services for you). However, this feature won’t be useful if your phone isn’t nearby when you need to call for help. And if your phone is nearby, you don’t need Google at all to contact 911.

If you have sound detection enabled on your Nest Hub (Google Assistant smart speaker or display) or a Nest camera, you’ll get a notification of the sound of a smoke alarm, carbon monoxide alarm, or breaking glass. If you open the notification in the Nest app, you’ll find a button that allows you to contact 911 with just one tap.

Google Assistant can’t do as much for you in an emergency as Alexa can, but the two assistants are compatible with plenty of smart devices that can provide peace of mind and hands-free help if the time comes.

Broadcast

Google Nest Hubs and the Google Home app allow you to broadcast a message to all compatible Google/Nest devices on your account. The devices must connect to the same Wi-Fi network and must not be in Do Not Disturb mode.

If you need to get a message to a particular device or room, you can ask Google to do something like “broadcast to the living room, I need help.” Your message, “I need help,” will then play on the speaker or display you’ve assigned to your living room in the Google Home app.

Google’s Nest Hub

$100 at Best Buy

More calls and messages

Nest Aware subscribers can contact 911 via the Google Home app, but there’s no way to make that call with only a voice command. You’ll need your phone to call via the app, but you might as well just call 911 the old-fashioned way at that point. Nest speakers and displays can, however, make audioonly and video calls to contacts from your Google account. So, if you need help from a loved one, you can simply say, “Hey Google, call Mom,” or whatever the case may be. Use these guides if you’d like to add new contacts from an Android mobile device or web browser.

By the number of built-in features and compatible smart devices, Alexa with Emergency Assist is the best smart safety option for most people, especially if you’re asking the question, call Alexa call 911. That said, both Google and Alexa assistants work well with alarm systems, security cameras, smart locks, and other devices designed to keep people safe.

If your main goal is to make sure someone can call for help with their voice, a few Echo Pop speakers make a worthwhile investment. If voice commands aren’t that big of a deal, a Google Nest Hub may be sufficient.