So you’ve decided you have room for a digital assistant in your house. That’s great: welcome to the future. But do you want to entrust your digital life to the Amazon Echo or the Google Home? Both speakers are excellent, but which company should get your hard-earned cash..?
For two products that essentially do the same thing, Amazon and Google have come up with two remarkably different looking products.
Let’s start with the Amazon Echo. Tall and cylindrical, the speaker looks self consciously space age. It lights up brightly when spoken to, and it would be pretty hard to hide – though if you’ve just spent over £100 on a speaker, that might well be what you want.
The Google Home, on the other hand, does its best to blend into the family home, and it does a remarkably good job of it. I’ve been moving it around the house as I write this piece, and I’m surprised at how neatly it fits in to whatever room it currently resides on – be it a kitchen shelf next to the spice rack, or on the living room table. It too lights up when spoken to, but in a far less obvious way.
You can also get different skins for the Google Home, to make it blend in further with your decor, while the Amazon Alexa is either black or white. Of course, an Echo Dot is easier to hide away should you not want to draw attention to it.
I’m giving Google Home the nod here, because with the extra skins, you can make it as attention-seeking or camouflaged as you see fit.
Winner: Google Home
First off, I should say that the Echo’s sound quality is technically as good as you want it to be. That’s because the smaller Echo Dot can be connected to any speaker, either via cable or Bluetooth, and it comes for the low-low price of £49.99. But for the purposes of this section, let’s assume we’re talking the full sized Echo against the Google Home.
To my ears, the Amazon Echo wins this particular bout. Google Home is a little more bass heavy, and offers a slightly muggier, less clear sound overall. It’s also worth noting that while the Echo can be paired to a phone with Bluetooth to play any sound files you like, Google Home cannot be. While you can stream your Google Home to a Chromecast Audio for better sound quality, it's a bit of a faff.
Even though Google Home supports multi-room audio, which Amazon Echo does not, it's still a win for Team Bezos.
Winner: Amazon Echo
One of the big advantages of these cloud based virtual assistants is that they’re learning all the time, and as such voice recognition just keeps improving. That said, for me, I’ve found Google Home much better at picking out words than Amazon Echo. Trying to get Alexa to play an REM playlist took about ten goes. Now to be fair, initials make for an odd word for assistants to recognise – nonetheless, Google Home recognised it much faster.
In terms of overall smarts, Google Home is a lot more clever. You can ask it all kinds of things, and it reads out an extract of a page from its search results with full citation. Echo does this occasionally, but it’s less effective. For example, when I asked Google Home “what was Derby County’s last score,” it told me they drew 1-1 with Rotherham United. Alexa, bizarrely, told me about Derby losing 3-1 to Leicester back in February. More often then not, it’s left stumped by questions.
But even when they both come up with the same answers, Google Home is generally more effective. If I ask Google Home how many hairs a cat has, I get the answer “On the website catsinfo.com they say there are approximately 60,000 hairs per square inch on the back of a cat, and approximately 100,000 per square inch on its underside.” The Echo, meanwhile says “A cat has 60,000 hairs.”
This intelligence battle has been confirmed by research from 360i, which put the two smart speakers to the test with a series of 3,000 questions. The results were clear: Google Home was six times more likely to answer the question effectively than Amazon Echo.
Now the way that these things work means that this could change in the long run as the Echo learns more, but for now it’s pretty clear this round is going to Google.
Winner: Google Home
Both smart speakers have a growing list of services that integrate neatly into the platform – and of course, some will remain exclusive to them. The Echo is particularly good if you are an Amazon Prime member, as you can order things and get a cheap Amazon Music Unlimited subscription as part of the overall package.
By that same token, if you’re a Googler, then Google Home offers some very useful extras. The best of these is Chromecast integration. You can boss around YouTube using only your voice, which is quite a neat party trick. If you’re on of those strange people that uses Google Play Music for all your musical needs (like me), then you’ll be right at home here too.
Neither Amazon nor Google seem to have great faith in their music platforms being a big draw though, as both include Spotify support, sensibly.
Other than that, the two are very evenly matched, with third parties wisely choosing to pitch their abilities to both speakers. For now, with the Google Home relatively new to market, the Amazon Echo has the edge – it could well be that its lead is short lived though, so watch this space.
Oh, and both speakers support IFTTT, meaning the ability to create your own commands is only really limited by your imagination.
Winner: Amazon Echo
This is obviously the most important benchmark. Both Google Home and Amazon Alexa will tell you a joke if you ask them to. It’s like having your very own personal court jester to entertain you at will.
But which is funnier? Here’s a best of three from both of them.
Alexa:
“What has eight wheels and flies?”
“A rubbish truck”
Google:
“I said to the gym instructor, ‘can you teach me to do the splits? He said ‘sure – how flexible are you?’ I said I can’t do Tuesdays.”
Alexa:
“Why did the American football coach shake the vending machine?”
“Because he needed a quarterback.”
Google:
“What do you call a microbiologist in an orchestra?”
“A cellist”
Alexa:
“Why is six afraid of seven?”
“Because seven ate/eight nine”
Google:
Did you hear the one about the chicken crossing the road?
It was poultry in motion
Okay, so neither are likely to kill the room in an open mic night, but I’m going to give this one to Google. Partly because I think the jokes are marginally better, but also because it has more flexibility in its structure, rather than the question and answer format.
Winner: Google Home
Well, this is a tough one. Technically both Google Home and Amazon Echo is cheaper than the other. Allow me to explain:
For the full sized speakers, you have Amazon Echo at £149.99. Google Home, meanwhile, is a cheaper £129.99.
But if you already have a perfectly good dumb speaker – or even a decent bluetooth speaker – then you can just get the Echo Dot for £49.99 for the same functionality, and possibly better sound.
Winner: Draw
So, on overall scores, it’s 3-2 – but given the winning goal was provided by the entirely subjective (not to mention superficial) joke telling round, you can probably guess this is an extremely close call, and my advice therefore hinges on a couple of things.
1) If you want the cheapest experience, the Echo Dot is the way to go
Assuming you have a speaker to connect it to (bluetooth or wired), it’s a no-brainer way of tasting the future.
2) If you’re tied into Google services – and especially if you use Chromecast – then Google Home is the superior product
Gun to my head, if I were buying one today, I’d pick Google Home – and I say that as a household that actually went out and bought an Echo and Echo Dot (the Home is sadly loaned for the purpose of this comparison). But the Amazon Echo is nonetheless a great device that is getting better all the time, and there really is very little between them as things stand.
3) If you care about sound quality above all else, it's best to wait
Neither offer amazing sound quality, even if I gave Amazon the nod earlier. It's probably worth hanging on to see what Apple's HomePod and the Harman Kardon Cortana speaker offer. Or connect an Echo Dot to your own brilliant setup, of course.
Finally though, it's worth remembering that there is another: Apple recently announced its own virtual assistant speaker: Siri in a box – or the HomePod as it's actually known.
Our hands on review gives you all the details you need, but the top-line is that this is more dedicated to music and sound quality than Google Home or Amazon Echo. That may look great on paper, but if it does, prepare to pay a premium. with a US cost of $349 per HomePod, you're looking at a premium. That's around the price of two Amazon Echos, six Echo Dots and 2.5 Google Homes.
The of course, there are rivals from in Amazon's own family. Not only has Amazon made the Alexa software available to third parties, meaning that the next Alexa-enabled speaker on the market may not be sold by Amazon, but they have their own version with a screen: the Echo Show. It's US only for the moment, and I think having a screen misses the appeal of the device somewhat, but the option will soon be available is you like.
As if that wasn't enough, Harman Kardon will be throwing their hat into the ring soon with a speaker powered by Microsoft's Cortana. We don't know much about it yet – there's no firm price, and no release date, though we'd expect it to be with us before the year is out. Oh, and the rumour is that Samsung will be getting in on the act with a Bixby speaker soon too – but consider the company a dark horse in this race, given Bixby voice commands still aren't enabled on Samsung Galaxy S8 handsets by default.
One thing is clear though: Amazon is clearly on to something with the smart speaker/home assistant, and as long as Echos continue to sell well, rivals won't be hard to come by. Both the Echo and Google Home make good purchases for the moment, but it won't be long before the market has plenty more options to choose from.
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Appearance
For two products that essentially do the same thing, Amazon and Google have come up with two remarkably different looking products.
Let’s start with the Amazon Echo. Tall and cylindrical, the speaker looks self consciously space age. It lights up brightly when spoken to, and it would be pretty hard to hide – though if you’ve just spent over £100 on a speaker, that might well be what you want.
The Google Home, on the other hand, does its best to blend into the family home, and it does a remarkably good job of it. I’ve been moving it around the house as I write this piece, and I’m surprised at how neatly it fits in to whatever room it currently resides on – be it a kitchen shelf next to the spice rack, or on the living room table. It too lights up when spoken to, but in a far less obvious way.
You can also get different skins for the Google Home, to make it blend in further with your decor, while the Amazon Alexa is either black or white. Of course, an Echo Dot is easier to hide away should you not want to draw attention to it.
I’m giving Google Home the nod here, because with the extra skins, you can make it as attention-seeking or camouflaged as you see fit.
Winner: Google Home
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Sound quality
First off, I should say that the Echo’s sound quality is technically as good as you want it to be. That’s because the smaller Echo Dot can be connected to any speaker, either via cable or Bluetooth, and it comes for the low-low price of £49.99. But for the purposes of this section, let’s assume we’re talking the full sized Echo against the Google Home.
To my ears, the Amazon Echo wins this particular bout. Google Home is a little more bass heavy, and offers a slightly muggier, less clear sound overall. It’s also worth noting that while the Echo can be paired to a phone with Bluetooth to play any sound files you like, Google Home cannot be. While you can stream your Google Home to a Chromecast Audio for better sound quality, it's a bit of a faff.
Even though Google Home supports multi-room audio, which Amazon Echo does not, it's still a win for Team Bezos.
Winner: Amazon Echo
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Voice recognition and smarts
One of the big advantages of these cloud based virtual assistants is that they’re learning all the time, and as such voice recognition just keeps improving. That said, for me, I’ve found Google Home much better at picking out words than Amazon Echo. Trying to get Alexa to play an REM playlist took about ten goes. Now to be fair, initials make for an odd word for assistants to recognise – nonetheless, Google Home recognised it much faster.
In terms of overall smarts, Google Home is a lot more clever. You can ask it all kinds of things, and it reads out an extract of a page from its search results with full citation. Echo does this occasionally, but it’s less effective. For example, when I asked Google Home “what was Derby County’s last score,” it told me they drew 1-1 with Rotherham United. Alexa, bizarrely, told me about Derby losing 3-1 to Leicester back in February. More often then not, it’s left stumped by questions.
But even when they both come up with the same answers, Google Home is generally more effective. If I ask Google Home how many hairs a cat has, I get the answer “On the website catsinfo.com they say there are approximately 60,000 hairs per square inch on the back of a cat, and approximately 100,000 per square inch on its underside.” The Echo, meanwhile says “A cat has 60,000 hairs.”
This intelligence battle has been confirmed by research from 360i, which put the two smart speakers to the test with a series of 3,000 questions. The results were clear: Google Home was six times more likely to answer the question effectively than Amazon Echo.
Now the way that these things work means that this could change in the long run as the Echo learns more, but for now it’s pretty clear this round is going to Google.
Winner: Google Home
Both smart speakers have a growing list of services that integrate neatly into the platform – and of course, some will remain exclusive to them. The Echo is particularly good if you are an Amazon Prime member, as you can order things and get a cheap Amazon Music Unlimited subscription as part of the overall package.
By that same token, if you’re a Googler, then Google Home offers some very useful extras. The best of these is Chromecast integration. You can boss around YouTube using only your voice, which is quite a neat party trick. If you’re on of those strange people that uses Google Play Music for all your musical needs (like me), then you’ll be right at home here too.
Neither Amazon nor Google seem to have great faith in their music platforms being a big draw though, as both include Spotify support, sensibly.
Other than that, the two are very evenly matched, with third parties wisely choosing to pitch their abilities to both speakers. For now, with the Google Home relatively new to market, the Amazon Echo has the edge – it could well be that its lead is short lived though, so watch this space.
Oh, and both speakers support IFTTT, meaning the ability to create your own commands is only really limited by your imagination.
Winner: Amazon Echo
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Joke telling
This is obviously the most important benchmark. Both Google Home and Amazon Alexa will tell you a joke if you ask them to. It’s like having your very own personal court jester to entertain you at will.
But which is funnier? Here’s a best of three from both of them.
Alexa:
“What has eight wheels and flies?”
“A rubbish truck”
Google:
“I said to the gym instructor, ‘can you teach me to do the splits? He said ‘sure – how flexible are you?’ I said I can’t do Tuesdays.”
Alexa:
“Why did the American football coach shake the vending machine?”
“Because he needed a quarterback.”
Google:
“What do you call a microbiologist in an orchestra?”
“A cellist”
Alexa:
“Why is six afraid of seven?”
“Because seven ate/eight nine”
Google:
Did you hear the one about the chicken crossing the road?
It was poultry in motion
Okay, so neither are likely to kill the room in an open mic night, but I’m going to give this one to Google. Partly because I think the jokes are marginally better, but also because it has more flexibility in its structure, rather than the question and answer format.
Winner: Google Home
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Price
Well, this is a tough one. Technically both Google Home and Amazon Echo is cheaper than the other. Allow me to explain:
For the full sized speakers, you have Amazon Echo at £149.99. Google Home, meanwhile, is a cheaper £129.99.
But if you already have a perfectly good dumb speaker – or even a decent bluetooth speaker – then you can just get the Echo Dot for £49.99 for the same functionality, and possibly better sound.
Winner: Draw
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Verdict
So, on overall scores, it’s 3-2 – but given the winning goal was provided by the entirely subjective (not to mention superficial) joke telling round, you can probably guess this is an extremely close call, and my advice therefore hinges on a couple of things.
1) If you want the cheapest experience, the Echo Dot is the way to go
Assuming you have a speaker to connect it to (bluetooth or wired), it’s a no-brainer way of tasting the future.
2) If you’re tied into Google services – and especially if you use Chromecast – then Google Home is the superior product
Gun to my head, if I were buying one today, I’d pick Google Home – and I say that as a household that actually went out and bought an Echo and Echo Dot (the Home is sadly loaned for the purpose of this comparison). But the Amazon Echo is nonetheless a great device that is getting better all the time, and there really is very little between them as things stand.
3) If you care about sound quality above all else, it's best to wait
Neither offer amazing sound quality, even if I gave Amazon the nod earlier. It's probably worth hanging on to see what Apple's HomePod and the Harman Kardon Cortana speaker offer. Or connect an Echo Dot to your own brilliant setup, of course.
Google Home vs Amazon Echo: Upcoming rivals
Finally though, it's worth remembering that there is another: Apple recently announced its own virtual assistant speaker: Siri in a box – or the HomePod as it's actually known.
Our hands on review gives you all the details you need, but the top-line is that this is more dedicated to music and sound quality than Google Home or Amazon Echo. That may look great on paper, but if it does, prepare to pay a premium. with a US cost of $349 per HomePod, you're looking at a premium. That's around the price of two Amazon Echos, six Echo Dots and 2.5 Google Homes.
The of course, there are rivals from in Amazon's own family. Not only has Amazon made the Alexa software available to third parties, meaning that the next Alexa-enabled speaker on the market may not be sold by Amazon, but they have their own version with a screen: the Echo Show. It's US only for the moment, and I think having a screen misses the appeal of the device somewhat, but the option will soon be available is you like.
As if that wasn't enough, Harman Kardon will be throwing their hat into the ring soon with a speaker powered by Microsoft's Cortana. We don't know much about it yet – there's no firm price, and no release date, though we'd expect it to be with us before the year is out. Oh, and the rumour is that Samsung will be getting in on the act with a Bixby speaker soon too – but consider the company a dark horse in this race, given Bixby voice commands still aren't enabled on Samsung Galaxy S8 handsets by default.
One thing is clear though: Amazon is clearly on to something with the smart speaker/home assistant, and as long as Echos continue to sell well, rivals won't be hard to come by. Both the Echo and Google Home make good purchases for the moment, but it won't be long before the market has plenty more options to choose from.
Winner:
While Google Home’s design and movie-playback features best the Amazon Echo, ultimately, Amazon’s voice assistant handily wins this match-up by letting you control a larger number of smart-home devices and providing a lot more skills in multiple categories. And, if you find the Echo too pricey, you can get Amazon’s assistant in a variety of other devices. However, with support for multiple users and hands-free calling to any number, Google Home is gaining ground; So our winner here is Google Home!
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