Amazon Echo at a glance
With a price tag of
The Echo’s design is straightforward, it’s a cylinder with a ring light at the top. It comes in 6 different colors: Charcoal Fabric, Heather Gray Fabric, Oak Finish, Sandstone Fabric, Silver Finish, and Walnut Finish.
Alexa supports skills for different apps and brands. For example, you could ask Alexa to order a pizza from Domino’s, call an Uber, or lock the doors on your BMW. You can also of course control your household smart objects from the Echo.
Amazon’s AI assistant is an evolving computer, meaning the more you use it, the smarter it will get. Alexa can learn your speech patterns and personal preferences, making your conversations with her smoother.
The Amazon Echo is superior in shopping and browsing stores.
Google Home at a glance
The Google Home costs $129.00.
Its design is unique: a sort of raindrop figure with a slanted, flattened top and flat bottom. The speaker/home assistant comes in white with a solid gray, fabric base. This base can be switched to a different material and a different color. Currently, Google officially released metallic and fabric bases. Metallic bases come in copper, snow, or carbon. The fabric bases come in mango, marine, and violet.
Google Home supports many skills right out of the box. You can play music, control smart objects around your house, and ask it questions which it will accurately answer utilizing the internet as its resource. Like Amazon Alexa, there’s a lot that the Google AI can do.
Google excels at research and browsing the web for answers to your questions.
Amazon Echo vs Google Home Comparisons
In terms of design, the Google Home is a more attractive device. It’s unique shape gives it a few extra points and Echo is too much of a boring, cylindrical figure. Both however, offer amazing color options.
The Google Home has better audio hardware, and can produce higher quality sound than the Amazon Echo, though not as loud. The difference isn’t largely noticeable, but it’s there.
The Amazon Echo is the winner in shopping and store functions, while the Google Home takes the trophy in web-browsing and research.
While the Google Home is compatible with some third-party apps, the Amazon Echo is much more flexible and versatile when it comes to carrying out commands for third-party applications.
In terms of listening ability, the Google Home reportedly has some issues with understanding some pronunciations. The Echo picked up audio much quicker and accurately, leaving less room for errors and wasting less time for clarification.
Google Home vs Echo Verdict
While I wouldn’t say it won by a landslide, I would have to side with the Amazon Echo in this competition. Its versatility in assisting with third-party apps gives it that much more functionality than its rival, the Google Home.
In addition to that, I personally use the Amazon store a lot throughout the year. So shopping online is very important to me. If browsing the web and asking a lot of questions is more your style, then the Google Home is unarguably a better choice for those kinds of requests.
It may lose in the appearance and audio quality area, but those are both small prices to pay for a bigger boost in capability.
Speaking of price, the Amazon Echo is also $30 less than the Google Home. That’s a lot of money saved!
Last but not least, the Amazon Echo is a newer device, developed later than the Google Home. It’s fresher and younger than the Google Home by a full year.