Google Home vs Alexa: We Tell You Which One's Better

Smart voice assistants are intelligent helpers that play a vital role in your smart home setup. They respond to your commands, provide information (such as facts or weather updates), and control your home appliances. You can interact with them using your phone or a dedicated smart speaker, offering hands-free control for your devices.

The popularity of voice assistants is on the rise. Amazon's Alexa is compatible with over 100,000 devices, and a 2021 study by Ampere Analysis revealed that more than half of UK internet households own a voice assistant. The three main voice assistants are Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri. Here, we'll focus on the first two, as they support the most smart home products.

With these platforms, you can control internet-connected smart devices through an app on your phone or tablet, using voice commands. Whether you're instructing Alexa to activate your security camera or asking Google to turn on your reading light, the possibilities are extensive with a smart assistant.

Let's look at it realistically. What will you use it for the most? Playing music, setting timers and alarms, making lists, random facts and optionally if you do have a smart home then control all of it. Firstly as you are buying you should know the pros and cons of each brand.  Too many ads, tracking all your details and not sticking to direct commands for a device that's meant to be based on voice control is a huge con with both. The pro is, having an assistant that will allow you to do tasks with just so much as a voice command, a smart home and controls, and finally a way of managing all your lists, reminders and schedules in one place, just by voice commands. 

Now these voice assistants are made for almost all of these with little variants in each model, and the best way to decide which generation you should go for has to be between the latest 2 ones released because they will have the latest features, updates and automation to them the previous models won’t. 

Now within each brand, there are various models. Let's start with Amazon Alexa first: 

Amazon Echo system contains many more models than Google Home, the variants are differentiated concerning their function. Let's discuss their top 4 models which are available on Amazon India. Apart from these, the other variants you can explore are Amazon Echo, Amazon Echo Plus, Amazon Echo Auto, Amazon Echo Spot, Amazon Echo Flex, Amazon Echo Input, Amazon Echo Look and Amazon Astro

If you ever wish for the Amazon Echo Dot to have much better-sounding speakers, here you have the Amazon Echo Studio. With 5 directional speakers along with Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio this speaker for sure going to light up your next house party. It will be better to look at this product as a high-end speaker which acts as an assistant rather than the other way round. Since the only difference between this and the Echo Dot is in the speakers and a whopping price difference of almost INR 17 thousand, we would recommend going with the Dot model only. That is if you are okay with a lower speaker quality. 

Let us talk about Google Nest now, a collective renewed term for all Google Home models. There are only 7 models released in total, including new generations, and most of them are unavailable online for buying. Check out your local stores if you can get the classic model of Google Home allows you to ask Google to do your tasks for you- listen to your favourite music, listen to the news, check traffic or adjust the room temperature. Since it is powered by Google Assistant, you can use it exactly how you use it on your phone, activating it by saying, “Hey Google”. Similarly, the Home Max, the best out-of-the-range for filling large spaces, it will tune itself automatically regardless of where you place it. Similar smart features such as the classic and mini, the major difference being size which is why this is built for sound, inside and out. Lastly, the one unreleased model is Google Nest Audio which is the best for a home, nest audio is a speaker that can change modes from surround sound to in-stereo. This also allows you to create your home audio system by connecting with other nest speakers around your house. This has the best sound haptics, as it gives you crisp vocals and a powerful bass in its large body. 

 Let's discuss the rest of the models here: 

The Google Home Mini and its 2nd generation are a miniature variation of the classic. The 2nd generation pretty much can do everything the classic model can- the major reason it is preferred. Since it is compact and blends right in any room you can place it anywhere and still get a powerful speaker, assistance tool and home manager. 

Imagine a tablet mixed with a speaker, this is what Nest Hub is like. Along with a voice assistant now you have a visual aid which you can command by voice to view your calendar, control compatible smart devices from the single dashboard, access Google Photos and watch YouTube! The Nest Hub Max version is just a larger alternative to the classic Hub model.

Which do you rate as more important: Verbally asking your smart speaker questions (i.e. internet searches)? Or, verbally asking your smart speaker to control things in your house?

In simple terms — Google knows things; Alexa does things. 

Overall Alexa has complaints about too many advertisements, user difficulties in using other music apps, and being unable to engage multiple commands at once, even the phone app for Alexa is not as good as Google’s.

But Google has complaints about activating by itself at times, drifting from the main command and latching onto incorrect directions, and tracking all your activities, if you even attempt to switch it off it will disconnect from your devices.

The advantages of each of these lie in the superiority of their tech, with Google being much more user-friendly and accessible, yet Echo being more efficient with costs and its purposes. 

So what is the best home assistant for you? It depends on your use case, if you are deeply embedded into the amazon ecosystem and are an amazon prime user, then the Echo is built around you. If you are all about that stock android experience or already use a google/android device the nest series can easily sync up with the google suite and would be really helpful.

Protip: Checkout the 12 best Bluetooth speakers ever according to LBB