The Google Home is one of the world’s most common intelligent speakers, despite landing later than the Amazon Echo in the elegant house scene.
The search giant launched a range of smart speakers from the Google Home launch in 2016, including Google Home Mini and Google Home Center.
In recent years, Google Home speakers have undergone a name change; now, Google speakers, including The Nest Hub Max and the Google Nest Mini, are new to The Nest.
Most of these intelligent speakers typically come with Google Assistant built-in – and thanks to regular updates and machine learning features, their voice assistant is still smarter.
You can tell your Google Home speaker to tell you the weather forecasts, lower your smart thermostat, say a fact, or find the funny YouTube clip that you had last night in your stitches and send it to your Chromecast.
Sure, voice assistants aren’t flawless and often when you talk to the Google Assistant, you can find your questions lost in translation.
This overall question – something that works rarely, but not all of the time – is not only symptomatic of Google Home’s $89/ £89 / AU$128, but its biggest competitor, the Amazon Echo, is far from free from it. In due course, both devices will become smarter, but they are making some mistakes for now.
One way Google has addressed this is by incorporating multiple acts and continuous talks, both making it easier to ask several questions simultaneously.
Google Home may not be flawless, but it will definitely improve over time, because Google continues to work on its AI voice assistant, Google Assistant, and we will periodically update our review with new features.
What is new about Google Home?
Your Google Home is constantly evolving – as new changes are being added to the Google Assistant. Now you can even teach your voice assistant to recognize your voice better, so that you can get personalized results for your orders and questions.
The Google Home app is being updated, which I hope will make using and managing your other smart home devices easier. It is not the only change to Google Home devices, but the company seeks simpler controls for its Nest smart screens, like Google Nest Hub Max.
Nonetheless, it’s not all good news; Google secretly disabled a convenient Google Home feature called Guest Mode, used to make media available to a Google Cast-enabled user without using the same Wi-Fi.
Guests without Wi-Fi connectivity will be issued a four-digit pin that is used to attach directly to the speaker. Guests now need the complete Wi-Fi password without that. Not the world’s end, but irritating.
It also came to light that Google Home speakers had issues with Bluetooth communication. Google claims it works on a patch, but is it too little, too late, with a variety of issues over a year?
Google revealed in more good news that Assistant has now crossed over 500 million users. This means that Google Home not only works on more than 5,000 devices – from cars to phones.
Google Assistant now supports Pandora Premium-just set up your default music streaming platform to say “Hey Google, play” and then a album, artist, playlist, or station name.
Also, you can now use Google Assistant to connect with Netflix if you have Android smart TV and ask it to play content just as if you have a top Nvidia Shield set.
You now have a new feature at Google Assistant that allows you to assign reminders to different people in your family. That means that you can evenly distribute all the various jobs if you share your home with others. There’s also a new option for mobile calls to Australia before a broader roll-out.