Google’s Home speaker and Amazon Echo are two of the most popular smart speakers, but which is the better of the two? Here’s our comparison of both devices.
If you’re thinking about purchasing a smart speaker, you might be going back and forth about which one to buy. We hear you. With all the news and info you hear about the two most popular voice assistants, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, it’s hard to know which one to choose. Given their usefulness from playing music, to some other stuff you probably didn’t know they could do, it’s no wonder why they’re so invaluable. Google’s Home speaker has been out since 2016, and despite it being phased out of Google’s website, it continues to serve both as an intelligent virtual assistant and a great music player. It’s worth mentioning that Google has since released its spiritual successor in the Nest Audio, effectively forcing the Google Home speaker into retirement from the company’s own website. However, a little research online can yield many online outlets that are still selling the original smart speaker that helped to kick things off for Google. Its biggest rival is the Amazon Echo, which is now in its fourth generation. Knowing how they’re similar and how they are different can help you make a well-informed purchase. Which smart speaker is right for you? Here’s a breakdown of cost, what the two voice assistants can do, what they look like, and their compatibility with smart home devices. The original Google Home is shaped like a cylinder, and it looks a little bit like a dehumidifier. It sits 5.6 inches tall, and it’s 3.79 inches in diameter. It has a white top and a slate-gray fabric bottom. You can get special bases for the speaker that changes the gray to a more appealing color for $20. These bases are available in carbon, pink, or copper metal. Additionally, you can get the Google Home Max, Hub, or Google Home Mini. The Google Home Max and the Home Mini are larger and smaller, respectively, than the original Google Home model. The Google Home Max is more expensive and is built for sound, while the Google Home Mini is a miniature, cheaper version of the original Google Home. Google rebranded the Google Home Hub as the Nest Hub. The Nest Hub has a 7-inch touchscreen display. The screen allows you to do things like watch videos, view photos, control your smart home via touchscreen, and view who’s at your door when you have a video doorbell that works with the Hub — like the Nest Hello. Google also released the Nest Hub Max. It functions exactly like its sibling but offers a few more features that make it the ultimate smart display — a larger 10-inch display for better media consumption, richer sound performance, and a built-in camera that allows for two-way video calls and peace-of-mind home security. The newest addition to the Google speaker family is the Google Nest Mini (second generation). It is faster than the first generation, inexpensive, made from recycled materials, and adjusts sound based on background noise.
