Screens, Speakers, and Everything Else General Discussion

[AustinIllini]

So, if you go to the "Smart Home" section here it's all kinds of people trying to get their Homepods to do things that Apple clearly doesn't support. I figure we would have a place to discuss our smart assistants, whether it be Google Assistant, Cortana, or Alexa.

I figured we could start by talking about what we have/had and what we prefer overall.

My smart speakers are:
Amazon Fire TV
Google Home Mini (Coral )
Google Home Hub

In the past, I have had:
Google Home (the air freshener one)
Amazon Echo dot

In addition, I have Sonos almost everywhere in my house (but they are all dumb).

I started up with Google Assistant right after it started up on my iPhone. In the early days, Google Assistant was smarter than Alexa but lacked the ecosystem to support it. For that reason, about 18 months ago I switched to Alexa. Let me say, though, Alexa is very, very unintelligent for a "smart assistant". As a result, I have gone mostly google in my house.

 

[tbayrgs]

Our household equipment:

2 Google Home
3 Google Home Mini
3 Chromecast Audio
3 HomePods (yup, that’s not a typo )

I’m a Google services user and until recently, the Google heavy setup worked best as my music service of choice was Google Play Music and podcast app was Pocket Casts (supports casting to Chromecast devices). I have a Nvidia Shield TV as so Google Home was the optimal smart speaker.

I previously dabbled with Echo devices but really find Alexa pretty unintelligent, don’t like how you have to actively search and activate skills and find the Alexa app to be subpar. They also don’t play that nice with Google so as soon as the Google Home came out, I instantly moved away from Amazon.

I liked the flexibility offered by creating my own multi-room speaker setup with Chromecast Audio. I also liked how Google Assistant supported Harmony Hub remotes so I could control my home media center (to a degree). Being able to have multi-account setups on the Google Homes is a huge plus. All those positives aside...

The Google Home speaker quality is pretty lackluster—better than Amazon’s initial offerings but that’s not a very high bar to clear. Chromecast Audio is great in principle but I would often find them sporadically unavailable (and thus usually needing a power cycle to reset), same for the speaker groups I’d created. They become so unreliable that I just stopped using them. I also had them paired with individual speakers that I’d need to manually power on each time I wanted to use them.

I was admittedly underwelmed by the HomePod at launch. The sound is pretty damn amazing though, onsidering their size but the ‘smart’ functionality offered was pretty limited, to be kind. Many, many months after launch, they received some pretty decent software updates (including AirPlay II, added functionality and iCloud support, and Shortcuts). After getting a Series 4 Apple Watch with cellular functionality, I signed back up for Apple Music for its streaming capabilities to the Apple Watch and moved to Overcast for podcasts due to it’s terrific offline podcast support (no Chromecast support). I was also able to grab the HomePods at pretty steep discounts. I prefer Apple’s Homekit/Home app for controlling my smart home setup vs. Google’s Home app (though it has improved), so I now pretty much use the HomePods for everything I need. Using the HomePods is just simpler, more streamlined and fits my current needs best. I still use the Google Home to control my home media hardware in our family room, timers/alarms, and for any informational questions (sports, weather, general questions). My kids actually probably use them more than I do.

 

[AustinIllini]

Google Home, for me anyway, is obviously hindered by its lack of Sonos support (supposed to be coming this year). It literally does everything better than Alexa, though.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

Google Home
Google Home Mini (Aqua)
Echo (2 gen)
Echo dot (2 gen)

I use Alexa(echo) the most and mainly for my Philips lights.

Two reasons I don't like using Google for my lights is ...
1) It gets annoying when Google repeats commands. I wish Google could just say "Okay" like Alexa does or a one to two word phase as confirmation.
2)When telling Google to turn a light to white, it's changes to more of an off-white. Different from the white that Alexa and Siri uses.

I haven't use my Chromecast in awhile. I plan of using it again, cause I heard Google Home works with controlling Netflix on a Chromecast.

I would have liked to try HomePod, but HomeKit is buggy at best for me, so HomePod is a no-go. Plus Siri still can't control Spotify.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I didn't know the Fire TV counted as a smart speaker

I have

2 homepods
1 echo dot
1 Echo 2nd gen
1 google home mini
1 Fire TV
1 Fire HD 8 tablet which I used in show mode in the show mode dock.

I don't know which one I'd say is my favorite but I admit that the homepod is the least intelligent by quite a margin. I like it because it sounds the best- although the regular echo isn't bad at all and it integrates the best with all my apple devices. The google home mini is the smartest, there aren't many things it cant answer. The echo is the most enjoyable to use due to the skills.

 

[AustinIllini]

I didn't know the Fire TV counted as a smart speaker

I have

2 homepods
1 echo dot
1 Echo 2nd gen
1 google home mini
1 Fire TV
1 Fire HD 8 tablet which I used in show mode in the show mode dock.

I don't know which one I'd say is my favorite but I admit that the homepod is the least intelligent by quite a margin. I like it because it sounds the best- although the regular echo isn't bad at all and it integrates the best with all my apple devices. The google home mini is the smartest, there aren't many things it cant answer. The echo is the most enjoyable to use due to the skills.

Correction, I have the Fire TV Cube, which is also an Alexa speaker.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Correction, I have the Fire TV Cube, which is also an Alexa speaker.

Ok yes the fire TV isn’t hands free. Fire cube isn’t out in the UK.
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Google Home
Google Home Mini (Aqua)
Echo (2 gen)
Echo dot (2 gen)

I use Alexa(echo) the most and mainly for my Philips lights.

Two reasons I don't like using Google for my lights is ...
1) It gets annoying when Google repeats commands. I wish Google could just say "Okay" like Alexa does or a one to two word phase as confirmation.
2)When telling Google to turn a light to white, it's changes to more of an off-white. Different from the white that Alexa and Siri uses.

I haven't use my Chromecast in awhile. I plan of using it again, cause I heard Google Home works with controlling Netflix on a Chromecast.

I would have liked to try HomePod, but HomeKit is buggy at best for me, so HomePod is a no-go. Plus Siri still can't control Spotify.

My chromecast is currently unplugged as I had too many things plugged in and had the Christmas lights plugged in where the chromecast was. Christmas lights are down now but I did read that the chromecast had been hacked a few days ago so I’ve held off on plugging it back in. My home mini is in my bedroom. I have an echo back ordered from Black Friday which is due to ship at the end of the month. My plan is to put the echo in the bedroom and bring the google home mini downstairs again so it can link up with my chromecast and also to make up for the deficiencies of the HomePods in that room!!!

Yes the google home controls Netflix on chromecast. I only have one chromecast so I can just say OK google play ‘orange is the new black’. It will switch my TV on and switch to the right input and then start playing the show. It can also do YouTube searches and in the US you can get it to play content that you’ve bought from the play store.

 

[AustinIllini]

This is like the dumbest complaint and I feel like a first world jerk when I bring it up, but Chromecast should support Sonos 5.1. It supports DTS but not Dolby Digital 5.1. The result is amazing picture with not so great sound. Disappointing.

Personally, I would rather have the opposite where I only get 1080p video but 5.1 surround. This is literally the only reason I haven't gone full Chromecast.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

It will switch my TV on and switch to the right input and then start playing the show.

Oh, that nice. Didn't know it did that.

 

[Shanghaichica]

One of my third gen echos just shipped from Black Friday. Looking forward to seeing the improvements over the second gen.