Description
Introducing the Google Home Assistant
Get real-time answers including the latest on weather, traffic, finance, sports, local businesses and more with the Google Home Assistant. A simple voice request triggers Google Home to play music, podcasts or radio from services like Google Play Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. With your permission, Google Home will learn about you and retrieve your flight information, set alarms and timers, and even tell you about the traffic on your way to work.
Google Home connects seamlessly with smart devices like Chromecast, Nest and Philips Hue, so you can use your voice to set the perfect temperature or turn down the lights. Cast your favourite movies, videos and shows to your TV. Just ask Google Home. With a simple voice command, play tunes from services like YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, and Spotify. Enjoy even more compatible audio services by streaming directly from your phone to Google Home. Get answers to things you want to know including the latest on weather, traffic, finance, sports, and more.
With your permission, Google Home can help you with things like your commute, flight information, and more. Plus it's a whiz at setting alarms, starting timers, and adding items to your shopping list. Simply ask Google Home to stream videos to your TV with Chromecast or to turn up your Nest thermostat. Google Home's high excursion speaker delivers HiFi sound quality. It can also hear you reliably thanks to far-field microphones.
Google Home Assistant Design
Google Home still looks fantastic. Its been designed as something youll want to put on show, looking less like a speaker and more like a fancy lamp or diffuser.
To keep the speakers design as uncluttered as possible, theres only one physical button on the Google Home. It disables the microphone, if you dont want the speaker to listen in on you.
As far as physical buttons go, theres just the one: a large microphone mute button on the back, should you be a little privacy-conscious and dont want Home listening in on you 24/7. Theres also a capacitive touch panel on the top, which you can use to adjust the volume with the speakers four LED indicator lights changing to a radial volume indicator as you do so or play/pause your music with a tap. A long press and Home will start listening, saving you from having to bark OK Google prior to every request.
Google Home Features
Out of the box, its fair to say that the Google Assistant is smarter than Alexa. Thanks to the range of Google services in the background, the Assistant can tell you the address of a local business, for example, and then follow up with directions to get there. Amazons Alexa AI still only offers driving instructions between two points that you set in the app, and often fails to find addresses when asked.
Google is more conversationally aware and more accessible to talk to. While Alexa often requires you to use very specific language to achieve something, Googles approach to language is more natural. Its context-aware, too. For example, ask Whats the weather like today? and you get an up-to-date forecast. Follow up with, And tomorrow? and Google understands that you want weather information for tomorrow. Alexa simply cant do that, and you have to say the full command for everything.
Home can connect to many IoT-enabled smart devices in your home, too, and youll be dimming your lights with the power of your voice and controlling your heating with Nest in no time flat. Theres a long list of third-party devices you can connect to, from Samsung SmartThings to Philips Hue and, excitingly, anything that supports IFTTT as well.
Now, it could be my thick Lincolnshire accent, but I found Home wasnt so good at picking up a few of my commands. I was in the mood for Daft Punks Alive 2007 album on Spotify the other night, but Home insisted on playing Babybert* Live 2007 instead, whatever that is. It called me Nay-thon, too.
Google Home Assistant: Sound quality
Thats not to say the sound is poor far from it, in fact but I found it just a smidge too bass-heavy
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