First Speaker, Second Voice

However the Echo "regular" will be plenty for most people. The second-gen Echo's main selling point is, of course, Amazon's voice assistant Alexa which is still our chosen assistant - for now until Google inevitably catches up. As with the last-gen Echo, Alexa can control music, control home gadgets, answer questions and do a ton of other stuff with Alexa Skills.

So what's new with the second-gen Echo? Essentially it's smaller and sleeker in design than its more gadgety looking predecessor and it's a damn sight cheaper too. There's six colours of fabric finishes to choose from charcoal, sandstone, heather grey, oak, walnut, silver and it's a squatter version of the original, definitely more pleasing but still not matching Google's home-friendly aesthetic and with a certain something missing in terms of style. In day to day use, it's actually very similar - because why fix something that's not broken? What Alexa can do is also increasing all the time - not limited to this speaker but the voice assistant can now make calls, let you "drop in" on other Echo users - a bit weird - and set up Routines, i.

Another difference is the 3. And you might well want to because you won't buy this for the sound quality. For Alexa conversations and in smaller rooms like say a bedroom or bathroom, the second-gen Echo sounds A-Ok but side-by-side with almost every other full-sized smart speaker we've tested recently Sonos One, Harman Kardon Invoke it comes up short, particularly for music. And that's despite the fact that Amazon has upgraded the innards. Here, we come back to price - it is still quite a bit cheaper than rivals, Alexa is easy to use, and, if music is important to you, you can add an Echo Sub to compensate for the lack of b ass.

Check out our full Amazon Echo second generation review. Sound quality is the only mild disappointment but there's ways round that. The Google Home, though, is the original of the Assistant lineup. If you decide to plug into Google's ecosystem, the Google Home is still worth considering, despite not getting an update in When playing music, audio quality isn't offensive, but the Home won't fill a living room and pales in side-by-side listening to speakers like Home Max, Sonos One and Apple HomePod.

That said, if you're happy to pick up a Chromecast Audio dongle, you can hook it up to better speakers. In terms of design, we're rather taken with its air freshener styling, with fascias in a range of mute colours. It blends into kitchens and living rooms nicely, even more so than some larger, traditional speakers and the only sign that it's connected is the coloured dots that light up on top when you're interacting with Assistant.

For certain things, we prefer talking to Google Assistant over Amazon's Alexa it's better at internet searches, as you might expect but it's still behind in third-party integrations, which it calls Actions. Alexa now has the edge on smart home automation and there are small everyday differences too - like the fact it's just easier to say "Alexa" than "Hey, Google" or "OK, Google'". Google is counteracting this by letting you ask follow-up questions to certain requests without repeating the wake word.

This advantage has subsided a bit as Alexa can now do the same thing. Still, it helps Google Assistant feel more human. Still, on most points, it matches Alexa - the app recently received an overhaul that made it easier to control your smart home gadgets.

Don't forget there's also multi-room audio and the ability to broadcast messages. This is the Echo that's selling like nobody's business and it's not hard to see why. And if you have children, you can also pick up the Echo Dot Kids Edition , which includes new safety features and requires kids to say "please" when making requests. The fabric, puck-shaped Echo Dot is also unobtrusive, and much more attractive than the plastic shell of the first generation. Aside from the new design, the main reason to upgrade or go for the Echo Dot is the much improved sound.

The new Dot now does degree sound that's cleaner and crisper, and you can connect two for stereo, though it's still at the low end of audio quality in the home. So you might still want to hook it up to existing speakers via aux-in or Bluetooth.

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Alexa isn't perfect - no voice assistant is - but on the Echo Dot it picks up the wake word and our commands from across the room and, more often than not - once you've learned what Alexa is capable of and which third-party skills you find useful - is able to do what we ask of it. Amazon has fancier devices, like the Echo Plus, but if you want to turn your smart lights on and off, and you only have a few different connected gadgets, this is really all you need. Plus you can hook it up to existing speakers for music.

Google has been slashing prices on its Echo Dot-alike and bundling it with other products, like the Nest Thermostat, helping to sneak it into more homes. The Google Home Mini is a neat, little smart speaker for anyone who doesn't want to spend too much money. We'd also recommend the Home Mini as a second, complementary device to a Google Home, say.

It's a small, good-looking tech pebble that comes in four calming colourways: You can tap the top to turn the volume up or down but Google has nixed the original feature that also lets you tap to wake due to a launch bug. During day-to-day voice interactions, the Home Mini is fab at picking up voices from across the room and it's neat that you can assign multiple voices for personal calendar info and recommendations. As with the Google Home, Assistant is very good at retrieving information from the web and Google's own services though Alexa has the edge when it comes to skills.

Google's Chromecast controls are nice, though not all services are supported yet. When value is top of your concerns, this means the Echo Dot scores another point. It's affordable, it looks good and Google is relentless at chasing down Alexa's features and integrations. If it could send audio to better speakers, this would be a wholehearted recommendation. The Apple HomePod is here and slides into our list of best smart speakers on account of its superb sound and Siri's impressive music smarts. With soft mesh fabric, it's the slickest looking speaker we've seen - no surprise given the famous Cupertino polish and its price.

Not to mention the fact that if you have an Apple Music sub, or you aren't adverse to getting one, this is a device built around one service. On that sound quality, the HomePod bests both the Amazon Echo and Sonos One in our testing The six-mic array and A8 chip inside work to listen to reflections from furniture and ornaments in the room to customise the sound output too - impressive stuff in action. The HomePod is far from perfect, though, and this is mainly around Siri's performance as a reliable, useful, fully featured voice assistant to rival Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant.

In short, it doesn't - at least not yet. As mentioned, the HomePod is a device built around one service - Apple Music - which has some terrible side effects. Like no voice support for big streaming services like Spotify. You'll have to make due with using the app on your phone paired with AirPlay 2. Speaking of AirPlay 2, it's helped the HomePod become a much more capable speaker, allowing you to connect it to other AirPlay 2-supporting speakers that includes Sonos for home-filling sound. If that's all you need then don't hesitate.

Still, it's not enough to entirely convince us when we've been living with Alexa and Assistant, two voice assistants which now have high end speakers to host them. And no voice control for Spotify may well be a deal breaker. The Sonos One is, in theory, the dream smart speaker for anyone who cares about sound and music in the home. Right now it's an Alexa powered speaker based on the Sonos Play: Google Assistant support will come at some point, once Sonos and Google work out the kinks to creating a hybrid Assistant platform.

You get the quality and you won't have to choose between smart home ecosystems eventually. So does it live up to this promise? As a Sonos speaker, it's fantastic. For such a compact device, it really can fill a room and you'll find it has a lovely, balanced and clear sound and punchy bass. Nothing to disappoint here. The Sonos One looks the part too with a classy design that'll sit well if you already have Sonos speakers dotted about your home, coming in two finishes - black or white.

Now, it's as an Alexa controller that we have more issues with the Sonos One. True, it's one of the better third-party Alexa experiences out there, but it has come with plenty of teething troubles too. The Sonos One has a six-microphone array inside but we found Alexa's voice and wake word recognition to be slightly below par compared to a regular Echo. We also had problems dealing with commands relating to groups and rooms plus voice control only works for Spotify and Amazon Music, not the huge range of streaming services Sonos supports. In general, you need to be more careful with your wording, which is a step back, not forward.

This can all be improved over time but right now, it requires a little extra effort and experimentation on your part. For people who want a speaker first and Alexa controls second, though, this is makes an excellent choice. For music first, voice controls second this is a good bet. If you want more, though, be prepared to learn. Built on the same design language as the Home and Home Mini, it comes in chalk or charcoal white or black — with fabric wrapped around the face and rounded edges, making it very soft and helping it fit in nicely with your home and furnishing.

It kind of disappears, which is no mean feat for something of its size. But that weight really translates into big sound. Inside the Home Max are two 4. Max also boasts a 3. Assuming you want Home Max to play using the power of your voice it supports Spotify, Google Play Music, YouTube Music and Pandora out of the box, which is a fairly complete gamut of services, and YouTube Music really fills in the library cracks, through which Amazon and Apple will sometimes fall.

Google calls it Smart Sound, and it calculates acoustics of the room and balances the audio, much like the way Sonos will use your smartphone to. As smart speakers go right now, it delivers a crowd pleasing sonic punch that can compete with the best. Google Assistant is developing nicely, and with plenty of support for audio sources, including YouTube Music, it's an adept entertainer as well as top smart home speaker. Our left field pick, the Triby Smart Speaker gets a nod because of how nicely it plays with different ecosystems and, well, because it's portable.

The Triby features built-in Alexa and will recognise the wake word to act just like an Amazon Echo smart speaker — albeit with a handful of features missing. Portable and wireless Alexa speakers are few-and-far between, but the Triby has more than just that up its sleeve. It's a fully fledged AirPlay speaker, which means you can send audio from your Apple devices, opening it up to Apple Music users who pretty much get nothing from Echo in terms of music playback.

If you're using Apple HomeKit, things are even better. The Triby Smart Speaker acts as a temperature and humidity sensor for your Apple Home app, and five buttons on the front are programmable for HomeKit scenes. Just set them up in your Home app, and then they can be assigned within the Triby app. With short, long and double press combos for each button, you can have 15 different assigned scenes. And you don't just have to use Apple HomeKit stuff. From within the Triby app you can assign things like radio stations, IFTTT recipes to your speaker — or use it as an intercom between Tribys, if you have them in separate rooms.

Finally, the Triby's E-ink screen does more than just tell you what's playing.

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It's not best in class in any respect, but as a secondary smart speaker the Triby is well worth your time. Amazon's attempt to build the only smart speaker and hub you need is ambitious, and we like where the Echo Plus heading, particularly in its second generation, which we've tested. First, what we like: It's also one of the better sounding Echo speakers of the bunch, thanks to a slightly bigger tweeter, so this alone might be worth the money. And while we didn't like the design of the original, which was essentially a first-gen Amazon Echo, it's also been given a friendlier new look for , just like the Dot and Show.

It now looks just like the second-gen Echo, and on the inside it has Dolby speakers, a temperature sensor useful for triggering thermostats etc and security sensors. More importantly, on the smart home front, the addition of the ZigBee controller is great, and this smart home protocol can connect to a whole bunch of popular home gadgets without their hubs Philips, Hive etc.

But it's still not all-encompassing or all-unifying right now, even though it could be in the future. Plus, power users who might be keen on the extra features might find everything too simplified and be itching for granular in-app controls again. Still, it's a very promising sign of where Amazon is heading. Marshall is a legendary name in music, so you can expect that its Stanmore II Voice smart speaker would lean in on sound quality.

It definitely does, sporting a watt amplifier to power a 13cm woofer and two watt amps to power two 19mm tweeters. The sound is great, and even at half volume you're getting room-filling sound that'll be crisp. Anything over 7 on the volume dial will be loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but you won't get any distortion. This is sound quality that gives even Apple's HomePod some good competition. So if you're looking for an Alexa or Google Assistant speaker with excellent sound quality, this is it.

Word of warning though: There are some big caveats here, largely that the Stanmore II Voice - at a little over 4kgs - is pretty hefty. You'll have to clear some space for this bad boy. The Google Home system handles the basics about as well as Alexa. You can add reminders, check your calendar or the weather, set alarms and timers, and schedule recurring alarms. You can even ask the device to translate a phrase from English to another language. You can also set reminders and calendar entries, or make outgoing phone calls to Canada and the US via Google Voice.

Amazon added Alexa-to-phone capabilities for the US, Canada, and Mexico in October ; prior to that, users could call only other Alexa owners. Calling or sending messages is easy—just ask Alexa to call or send a message to a person. You can also dictate a specific phone number. In our tests the sound quality was pretty good, too. You can also use your connected Echos, Taps, Dots, and Shows as a home intercom system. If you have the Echo Show, Look, or Spot, you can use these features to video-chat as well, at no additional charge. As of February , Alexa also supports text messaging for Android users but not group texting.

The Home system attempts to answer more questions, offers a bit more contextual information, and usually gives a longer though not necessarily more informative answer. The Google Home attempted to answer more than 60 percent of the questions, while the Echo attempted to answer only about 20 percent.

First Speaker, Second Voice: Mark Pitts: www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books

Of the questions they attempted to answer, both were correct more than 80 percent of the time. In practice, when we asked what the smartest dog was, the Home said it was the collie, while the Echo kept silent, probably out of respect for a hound dog that happened to be in the room. When we asked what the best Bluetooth speaker was, the Home had no answer, while the Echo suggested a Bose model that happened to be a Wirecutter pick, then unsurprisingly asked if it should order that speaker from Amazon right at that moment. Both can do math, tell you the population of China, and state how many teaspoons are in a cup.

Amazon added contextual awareness to Alexa late in , but the Home system still does it better. In November , Google Home added the ability to understand two commands at once ; Alexa speakers gained this feature shortly after. Now it can give me the phone number, too.

Perfect for audio-lite applications or connecting to an existing music system or Bluetooth speaker. Google is gradually catching up to Amazon, but it still has a long way to go. Your Echo will support some smart-home devices out of the box, but for others you need to first enable a third-party Skill. Naming and grouping are important for managing your devices. For now, you have at least a few options for most smart-home services, in addition to the less-reliable IFTTT applets.

Google Home Hub owners can also control all of their smart home devices from the Home View dashboard on the display screen. While most smart speakers are more focused on audio than video, some people might want to connect their Echo or Home to an indoor or outdoor security camera , a video doorbell , or another visual smart-home device. Google gets a slight edge in this regard thanks to Chromecast , which allows you to stream video to any Chromecast-enabled screen, using the Home as a central hub.

Both Chromecast and the video-enabled Echo models will let you stream videos with voice commands, too. In the spring of , Amazon released the first camera-enabled Alexa device, the Echo Look. This was followed by the Echo Spot and Echo Show , which both have built-in screens so you can watch videos or chat with friends in addition to the standard smart speaker capabilities.

Google released a similar video-enabled smart speaker, the Google Home Hub , in the fall of However, it does have a special dashboard view that lets you control all of your smart home devices from a single screen, as well as a step-by-step recipe library. You can set up scenes and combine more devices than the other platforms allow. In fact, HomeKit approaches the functionality of a smart-home hub. Voice control via Siri is mostly good, though the feature usually requires more precise wording to perform a task than Alexa or Google. As a voice assistant for the phone, Siri is pretty good, and Apple has been at it longer than anyone.

Asking directions, adding things to to-do lists, dictating text messages, and performing basic information searches come naturally to the system. Like the others, it can set reminders, create to-do lists, conduct Web searches, and play music requests. While Cortana works with Insteon smart-home hubs, it has no other device integration at the moment, though that kind of functionality is in the works. Without this feature, Cortana is not a serious competitor to Siri, let alone to the Google Home system or Alexa. You can find other integrated voice platforms as well.

Josh is designed for professional home automation and costs thousands of dollars to install. After Samsung acquired Viv , a voice-control system started by some of the original creators of Siri, it launched a voice assistant of its own called Bixby. Though Bixby is currently available only on a limited number of Samsung phones, Samsung has begun working on a smart speaker that uses the audio assistant, confirming a report by The Wall Street Journal subscription required.

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We plan to test that speaker when it becomes available. Both the Echo and the Home feature always-on microphones, though each includes a mute button to turn off the mic if you want some privacy. When the speaker hears its wake word, it jumps into action and sends a recording of the command it heard to its cloud servers, where the command is translated into an action; then you get music, an answer, or whatever it is you asked it to do.

The process, while it may vary slightly depending on your Internet connection, can be instantaneous or take up to a few seconds. The fact that these speakers are always listening concerns some users and privacy advocates. In fact, in police requested access to the archived recordings of an Echo to discover if it could aid in a murder investigation. Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course. Should you be worried about all that?

Both devices use their listening skills to accumulate data about you, not only for product-improvement purposes but also for marketing and advertising. Google is probably collecting more data overall than Amazon, because it has more tools to do so, including its main search tool, the Chrome browser, the Maps app, Gmail, and the calendar. Both Amazon and Google let users delete all recordings, but warn users that deleting information may also affect how well the systems respond to you.

The best smart speakers: Google Assistant, Alexa and HomePod

You can view and manage your Google Home history here and your Amazon Echo here. On both devices, you can turn the mics on and off with a tap, which Sonos says is meant to be a privacy measure. Both speakers ship with only Alexa capability, but Sonos has said that Google Assistant compatibility will arrive in That timeline may be optimistic, especially since people spent most of waiting for Alexa to arrive on the platform before the release of the Sonos One. As it stands now, all Sonos speakers have Alexa support through a connected Echo, Dot, or other Alexa device. Panasonic and Sony are both releasing their own smart speakers with Google Assistant.

We respect your privacy. You can change your cookie preferences to enable comments. You can also send us a note or a tweet , or find us on Facebook. Opt out or contact us at any time. Google Home Good for synchronizing music Though great for starting an inexpensive multiroom audio system and more able to interface with some Google products, the Google Home is still catching up with the Echo. Everything we recommend Our pick. Amazon Echo 2nd Generation The smarter smart speaker The second generation of Amazon's Alexa-enabled speaker lets you control music, audiobooks, a wide assortment of smart home products, and thousands of unique Skills with voice commands.

Why you should trust me Who should get a voice-controlled speaker Best for streaming music, podcasts, etc: Amazon Echo, by a hair Best speaker: Amazon Echo Best digital assistant: Amazon Echo Best at answering questions: Google Home Best smart-home controller: Amazon Echo What about video? What about Siri, Cortana, and other smart speakers? Better for Amazon services, including Audible.