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Robot advice - Google Home or Amazon Echo
Aridhol
Daddliest CatchRegistered User regular
Daddliest CatchRegistered User regular
My wife and I have finally agreed to bring a robot into our lives and we're looking for recommendations on which ecosystem to go with.
We've spent a couple days reading reviews and stuff but we haven't been able to pull the trigger.
Scenario:
2 floor house, no current automation
4 family members, 2 adults, 2 kids (3&6)
I am very tech savvy and we have the whole house wired for cat 6, home theater, electronics all over the place.
Wife is an iphone/mac person and I am win/linux and android
Primary concerns:
Secondary concerns:
General wants:
So, people with robotic overlords, sell me on what you got!
We've spent a couple days reading reviews and stuff but we haven't been able to pull the trigger.
Scenario:
2 floor house, no current automation
4 family members, 2 adults, 2 kids (3&6)
I am very tech savvy and we have the whole house wired for cat 6, home theater, electronics all over the place.
Wife is an iphone/mac person and I am win/linux and android
Primary concerns:
- Easy to hail - We give the edge to Alexa here as it just feels more natural to say
- Quality of information search - Edge to google? I read somewhere Alexa uses bing?
- Kids stuff/Parental controls - We use google family link right now with the tablet to limit screen time, youtube content, apps etc... and it works great. Anyone have experience with Amazon FreeTime unlimited?
- Sound quality - pretty straightforward, we're not audiophiles but there is always audio of some sort on
- User differentiation - I need the ability to have separate voice profiles so that when I add something to a shopping list it goes on mine and not my wife's and vice versa
Secondary concerns:
- Price - We will eventually have a device downstairs in my office, one for the older kids room, one for the living room
- Integration - We use gmail, google calendar, Google maps all the time. We have and use amazon prime music and video
- Home automation - We eventually would like basic controls for lights and thermostat (we use an ecobee wifi enabled stat now). Flexibility is my key want here. I would like some interoperability (think opposite of the way apple works).
General wants:
- I'd like my kids to have the ability to ask questions like "When did the titanic sink" or "How to spell Acrobat". Not trying to replace myself but I want them to be curious and to have the easy ability to learn.
- I would like the kids to have the ability to ask for music playback or "read me a story" or "read X book"
- reliability - service needs to be reliable, devices last a long time, stuff like that
So, people with robotic overlords, sell me on what you got!
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But I'm fine just having a cheap bluetooth speaker that I can occasionally ask questions/play quizzes.
I mostly use the thing for just music and podcasts, and controlling one of those chromecast dongles ("play/pause" etc).
I have like, one smart bulb, haven't bothered to connect it to it yet.
This is mostly my feeling too. I do have 1 smart bulb and I like it, largely because I can vary the color via voice as well. I had a few more, but I live in a 1br apartment so that was overkill. In the morning I'll often check the weather and listen to some morning news. I went with google because I was using the google assistant on my phone.
My house is 2 floors with cat5 wired throughout and good coverage for Wireless. We currently have 3 Alexa's and have the Fire Cube coming Thursday (An Alexa/Fire stick combo). I've got about a dozen Hue lights and a Hue bridge for automation purposes but that's it thus far. The 3 Alexa's currently are in the Kitchen, 1 in our bedroom (so we can voice command turn off the bedroom lights and get the weather via a routine in the morning), and downstairs in the main TV area. The Fire Cube will replace the main TV area and I might move the Alexa down there into the office or into the kid's room.
I enjoy the Alexa. We use it to control the lights and run various routines to turn lights on at certain times and off at certain others. My wife plays Jeopardy with it and it connects to my Plex server to play music (I've not tried TVs or movies with it yet, maybe once the Fire Cube arrives).
My son is only 2 so he doesn't use it yet for the purposes you've mentioned.
Alexa will switch Amazon profiles with a command so my wife can switch it to her profile to order things. Most of the media we own is through my Amazon account, so most of the Alexas primarily use my account. I know there are a lot more things I can do with her, but I honestly haven't tried.
My one complaint might be the volume on Alexa. It's inconvenient to change volume via voice command and I also don't think the speakers get loud enough some times. Thus far I've not had issues with the incorrect Alexa picking up my voice from a different room, so all of them have the same command currently. If that becomes an issue you can always switch the wake command.
I would like a scenario where I say "resume audiobook" and it plays mine and then my wife can do the same without any clunkiness.
Same thing with music since we have different tastes.
The intercom thing sounds great
The website does say you can do that though.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202199330
It can do the audio book resume thing, as long as you have separate Audible accounts. Switching accounts is basically "Alexa, switch accounts", "Alexa, switch to (name)'s account", or if you have Alexa trained, "Alexa, switch to my account." Skills are locked by account, so if you have separate Pandora accounts, Pandora commands go to the account associated with the active account, for example.
Sounds like Google has the better natural language processing and better answers so now I just need to dig into the kids stuff. The amazon FreeTime stuff looks amazing but I am sure google has something similar.
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I just got one of these and love it. Be warned it doesn’t play 100% with the Alexa ecosystem currently. I tried to do a house announcement through it to the echo upstairs and it’s not supported yet.
I have a home theatre system for music in the upstairs area but that is appealing for downstairs.
I'm almost completely sold on the google home route at this point. I just have to convince my other half there is educational stuff and fun things for the kids. She is very sold on the amazon FreeTime stuff.
There is definitely a major difference in audio quality between the regular Echo and Echo dot. I’m not an audiophile by any means but the dot’s sound is notably weaker and tinnier even to me. If you do get an Alexa I’d say make sure wherever you put the full sized one is somewhere it’ll get the most use.
So many mud crabs.
the dot speaker sucks for real. Fortunately "connect to bluetooth" will direct it to seek out a proper speaker.
Note: You can now play music over multiple Echo devices at once, but the Tap is not an "Echo" device; which is a gigantic shame.
If you want it to play the "clean" version of anything, it seems like you have to say the full title with "clean." It is fine with non-literal requests, but defaults to the explicit (aka: Normal) version.
Try doing that with the Black Panther soundtrack, for example, which is actually called:
"Black Panther The Album Music From and Inspired by [Clean]"
Spoiler: It is not possible. I had to make a play list for just that version of the album.
Google's thing may be better in that regard, if you have kids, or are way too white to get away with rocking out to the n-word in your backyard.
My neighbours are cool I think because when I garden I crank the music on my Bluetooth and no one says a word.
Given that the echo dot speaker isn't that awesome, how would anyone with the Google home mini rate that speaker? Same deal?
The living room will probably have a full Google home unit but I was thinking the mini for the kids room and downstairs.
The Home mini speaker is plenty loud and clear enough to listen to music or podcasts while cooking dinner. Will it replace a dedicated stereo or home theater setup, certainly not, but it gets the job done. Note I do not have an echo dot to compare against.
Looking at the specs, the Mini has a bigger (0.6" vs 1.6") speaker, so you'll definitely get a better frequency response from the Mini. That's the main issue with the Dot; clarity is acceptable.
I've had an Alexa for a few years. It's... fine. Could be a little better at a lot, is fine for music (primary use), buying stuff* (God damnit! Alexa, buy me a new garden hose!), and leaving little love notes. I find the skill invocation (and underlying framework!) kludgey at best.
Audio pickup is really good.
Phone app integration is much better now, and they seem to be focusing on this of late.
Bad at: Googling anything more than shallow trivia, controlling my Roku.
But none of that may bother or impress you, it's all pretty subjective.
Suggestion: Pick up a Dot and a Mini, see how you like the services as you would use them (since that's hard to guage), then throw one or both back and revisit the sound quality solution cost comps; because that's easy to resolve for either brand.
*
Edit: Oh, you know what? I think you can just install the Alexa app on your phone to try it out.
Easy setup, sound quality is decent.
Even though I knew about it the link for volume of the music and the google voice is a bit annoying. Keeping music on low volume makes the assistant pretty quiet.
I think it's probably time to get a Chromecast.
I like it. Haven't run into any issues with it so far, and it's great to just be able to play music from basically anywhere in the house, have it read you a recipe as you're cooking, ask for the news of the day, set reminders for yourself, have lights turn on at specific times, etc.
On smartbulbs, they're pretty nifty in that you can group at the bulb level and then by room. So you can tell Google to brighten the kitchen, or just over the sink. Or turn on the porch light, or just driveway, or "turn on outside lights" to fire em all.
I don't think you can go wrong with either. They're both releasing updates for them, and they're not going anywhere.