Smart Home Speakers
The battle now being fought between the big tech companies for consumer money centers on thesmart speakers voice controlled.
After having conquered your pocket with the ubiquitous smart phone (Smartphone). Now, they've found the next must-have gadget that will open up a new market for the home. Smart speakers that will automate our homes according to our needs and, you know what, they are also cheap!
Today we are going to talk about smart speaker and as we will see later, from Amazon Echo from Alexa, from Apple HomePod Y Google Home. Systems that will help us create our smart home (The famous smart home) perfectly domotized without the need to overheat our heads.
The idea of utility is very simple, the following scheme can visually see how all these systems work … (Although it is the scheme of the amazon speaker made plus, the other systems work the same)
Note: the Alexa device, is the name given to the virtual assistant that interacts with us from echo amazon speaker.
What is a smart speaker?
Is a digital assistant that through avoice controlled smart speaker It allows us to interact with speech and can also control the different devices in our home, office, etc.
The alexa amazon echo Spanish, like the other systems, are able to answer questions, set timers, calls, play music or radio, read news and books, teach us English, control devices at home, etc. Actually, the cap is the user's imagination.
But… How do users really use smart speakers? They are useful? Or they just end up feeling one more adornment of home …
What are smart speakers for?
To understand it well, we have to move to the US market because we are much more consolidated in the use and purchase of this type of Wireless speakers with bluetooth.
In the following graph we can test the main utilities that they contribute to users …
As we can see in the graph, the main utility is the question and answer (reaches 60%), but what interests us is to test its usefulness in home automation, and reaches 27%.
27% of users use smart speakers for home automation
All these kinds of voice-operated devices They have different models with different sizes that are connected to each other to be able to distribute them throughout the home, if we have a large house.
Regarding the utility according to the type of stay of the house; living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms … etc. We can see in the graph that 52% of users use it in the dining room.
We are not talking about anything new if we emphasize that we spend a lot of time in the living room and, for example, we can control the lighting in the house (bluetooth bulb) with our simple voice.
The trend in sales of this type of smart devices it is reaching spectacular heights as we show in the graph.
We recall that both in our article on smart homes and on home automation, we already confirmed that technology is entering homes in a forceful way whose upward trend is unstoppable. Take note!
The amazon alexa like other similar devices; The Google Home from the famous Google search engine or the Home Pod Apple already represent the epicenter of smart homes voice control of all other home automation systems.
And now, it's time to see the comparison of the different devices to see which one we could buy for home …
Comparison Amazon Echo vs Apple HomePod vs Google Home
This comparison is about the three systems that currently work best and that are sold the most, taking into account that although there are different models (Mainly the size varies) the comparison is about the standard model of each brand and they are:
- Smart speakers Amazon echo plus (Represents the 2nd generation that has started to be sold in Spain this month)
- Smart speakers Home Pod (Apple with the Siri assistant)
- Smart speakers Google Home (Of Google)
In the following diagram we see the most prominent generalities (advantages and disadvantages) in this smart speaker comparison, although in terms of functionality and utility, they more or less do the same:
It is proven that one of the biggest factors when buying one of these smart speech devices, is the price, obviously !. So we do the comparison:
As of the writing of the article, the Amazon Echo Plus and the Google HomeThey are the cheapest on the market. In Spain, with the Echo Plus a Philips smart bulb is given away - bluetooth led bulb so that you can start to see the operation of the integrated home controller, you can see it from HERE on Amazon.
It is necessary to make a brief general introduction for each device …
Music functionalities
- Google. Access to Google Play Music and integration with Google Cast or Spotify platforms. Also with the Chromecast
- Amazon Access to Spotify and Music Prime (Amazon's music platform, you have a three-month trial)
- Manzana. Works only with Apple Music.
Productivity features
- Google. It integrates very well with your services; Google Maps, Tranlate, Calendar, etc.
- Amazon It has a wide ecosystem of apps that is expanding day by day; Uber, Just Eat etc …
- Manzana. In your own app ecosystem.
Smart home
- Amazon echo plus. It integrates with products like Samsung's smartThings or Philips Hue bulbs. Working with the Zigbee, which is a global wireless radio communication standard designed to allow control and monitoring of connected devices, it is aBluetooth speaker.
- Google. Integrates with devices Nest.
- Manzana. Integration with the Apple Homekit app
* Amazon and Google are making a lot of progress in home automation and apps and utilities are constantly appearing to expand their possibilities. In the case of Apple, as always, you can only work with its ecosystem.
Users
The google speakers and Amazon support multiple users.
- Amazon Echo. User is switched by voice command.
- Google Home. Recognize the voice of different users.
- Apple HomePod. It does not support multiple users.
Intelligence
- Google assistant. It is similar to the famous Google Now, a large amount of information available.
- Alexa for Amazon. Very advanced, probably the smartest.
- Siri for Apple. The famous assistant of the iPhone, goes to the loudspeaker. He has a little left to catch up with his opponents.
Privacy
Clearly, privacy is Apple's model, since it works solely on its own ecosystem of apps. Smart features are more limited than other models. In addition, it encrypts everything and does not link your data to the Apple account.
In the case of Amazon and Google, they use your answers and questions to learn from you (They use artificial intelligence - AI), saving the information on their servers. From here, well, we already know!
Actually, if you want privacy, you have no choice but to use Apple for its encryption.
But… what is the best smart speaker?
First, we have to comment that these types of systems are not perfect and, although in English speaking they are more perfected, having many more applications, skills and apps, in Spanish speaking they are still a bit green if we compare markets.
For our part, for a first contact and see all the possibilities that they can offer us, we would opt for it amazon echo plus 2nd generation, having in favor its discounted price.
This device can be accompanied by a series ofgadgetsthat will turn your house into a smart home controlled by Alexa with your oral orders. The Echo Plus speaker may configure your smart home devices via bluetooth without the need for an additional controller:
As of the date of the article, as an introductory offer in Spain, it can be obtained with a40% off in the different models …
If what we are looking for is a speaker with quality sound, design, that entertains us for a while and that brings us aspects of home automation to the home and to listen to music while working at a consistent price. Well, the Amazon Echo Plus is the perfect one!… They also give us a Philips Hue White smart bulb.
Note: This website is not responsible for possible changes in the price of the products displayed in this article.
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