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Amazon Alexa is filled with tons of great features, and the ability to control your connected home. Our guide covers everything you need to.
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Sure, some will prefer the compact simplicity of the Google Home Mini, or the smaller screen of the original Nest Hub, but the Nest Hub Max gives you a full-on Google smart speaker experience. You get a crisp inch screen, a heavy-duty speaker that can fill a room with good-quality audio, a forward-facing camera for making video calls and using the device as a security camera , and of course all the magic of the Google Assistant. With that screen, the Google Assistant can do even more, and the touchscreen controls let you pause videos and music.

It's significantly smaller than the big Echo Show but it's significantly cheaper as well, and has all the magic of Alexa on board. The screen is still perfectly readable when it comes to weather forecasts, recipes, calendar entries and so on, just not so great for video footage. Here's the Apple HomePod, which has a lot going for it: very impressive sound quality, for instance, which can adapt to the room its in to make sure your ears are always hearing your tunes at their best.

It also looks and feels fantastic, a proper premium bit of kit, and definitely one of the best smart speakers of On the downside, you're going to be disappointed if you need to go beyond Apple Music, Siri and the iPhone with your HomePod: support for the likes of Spotify or anything else not made by Apple is pretty much non-existent though you can stream audio from iTunes on Windows.

Still, it's the best smart speaker for those already heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. Besides the rebranding that's taken place to reflect Nest becoming the umbrella label for everything in the Google smart home range, the Nest Mini adds a wall mounting hole and boosts the audio from the original Google Home Mini. Voice detection should be improved with the introduction of a third microphone, and Google has brought back the tap controls as well — just touch the top of the speaker to pause or resume audio playback, and slide along it to change the volume.

Otherwise the Google Nest Mini is very much like the Google Home Mini: all the power of the Google Assistant in a very compact, aesthetically pleasing form factor. Your choices for colours are chalk, charcoal, coral or sky. The Amazon Echo is not just one of the best Amazon Echo devices on the market, but one of the best smart speakers full stop.


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Amazon recently unveiled the third-generation of its standard Echo speaker, and it's better than ever: more stylish, more capable, and better sounding. All you are really missing out on in comparison to the Echo Plus is that additional smart home integration that lets you ditch some of the other hubs you might have set up — though Alexa works just fine as a smart home hub anyway.

Amazon has kept the price the same as it was for the previous edition, and the colours have been tweaked a little bit too. There are now a host of Amazon Echo speakers to choose from, but this might hit the sweet spot in terms of audio quality and price. The Amazon Echo Dot may look understated, but it is one of very best Amazon Echo speakers available today. All the smarts of Alexa and all the compactness of a Google Home Mini make the Echo Dot a very appealing option in our best smart speaker list — especially considering its latest refresh, which gave it a more curved appearance and added some attractive-looking fabric finishes to the Echo Dot mix.

If you're just getting started with smart speakers then the Echo Dot is an excellent entry point, and unlike the Google Home Mini you can hook up a different speaker with the 3. At this price you might as well get one for every room.

Everything you need to know about the Amazon Echo - CNET

It's also now available with an integrated clock. The Google Home now looks a little dated, but if you can get it cheap, it is still one of the best smart speakers lining store shelves. Google gladly name-checked the Amazon Echo when unveiling its very own smart speaker, and the Google Home does everything you would expect — it has the excellent Google Assistant on board of course, which continues to lead the pack of AI apps for the moment.

The Google Home is a little lower in our listings because we think the Google Home Mini is a better value proposition and this speaker is now getting on for a couple of years old. The software keeps getting regular updates though, and it remains a fantastic smart speaker and one of the best Google Home speakers available. Relatively new to the best smart speaker scene — or should that be the smart display scene? It acts as the centre of your smart home operations, controlling other devices and all your Google apps.

So, you can watch YouTube videos, see a slideshow of Google Photos, change the temperature on your Nest thermostat, ask Google a question, and so on and so on. We like the style and feature-set of the Google Nest Hub originally called the Home Hub , and there's no camera to worry about. The Amazon Echo Show is pretty easy to explain: an Echo with a screen. That means Alexa can show as well as tell you information about your schedule and the upcoming weather forecast, for example. Video calling and movie watching are easy with the Echo Show too.

There's a lot to like about the Amazon Echo Show then, especially the redesigned 2nd-gen model, but there are some small reservations. It's relatively expensive, and support for non-Amazon video services such as YouTube remains something of a sore point. Make sure you consider the new, smaller Echo Show 5 as well though. The Sonos Beam is another of the newer Sonos speakers with Alexa built in and with Google Assistant and AirPlay support coming soon, hopefully — it's a compact sound bar that can play audio from your television set or from a host of music streaming services.

It's a hugely impressive bit of kit — don't let its lower position on this list fool you — but in terms of smart speakers it's at the pricier end of the range. Only get this if you have the budget and are going to make full use of all the extra features you get with a Sonos device. For those who find inch screens too big and 5-inch screens too small comes the Amazon Echo Show 8. You don't have to be a genius to work out what the story of the Amazon Echo Show 8 is — it's another smart speaker display from Amazon, this time with an 8-inch screen.

That puts it right in the middle of the inch and the 5-inch Amazon Echo Shows that were already on the market. The price is in the middle too, so it might be the sweet spot for some people. For us, it kind of falls between two stools: either you want a compact display, or you want a large one We do like the design though, which continues to improve with each show.

The Lenovo Smart Display is another of the best speakers with a screen, for watching YouTube and other video content.

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Another smart speaker with a display, the Lenovo Smart Display is available in 8-inch or inch sizes, so take your pick accordingly. It doubles up as a Chromecast, has decent-sounding audio, and can be used as a video calling device too. With Google Assistant on board, it's just as smart as any of the best Google Home speakers on the market in , with everything wrapped in a solid and secure device that's perfect for the study or kitchen.

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Just because the Google Home Max is at the end of our list doesn't mean you should discount it: this is still a list of the best smart home speakers money can buy in , and all these models are worth their place. In this case, you're getting some fantastic audio quality. Top-level audio quality, plus the excellent Google Assistant on board, plus the option of a cabled connection, plus casting abilities — what's not to like? It'll cost you a lot of money, that's the key drawback, and it's probably overkill for most people's smart speaker needs. We're big fans of the Amazon Echo Spot, which takes the considerable smarts of Alexa and adds a dinky little screen.

That small display is more useful than you might think in terms of what you can do with it: watching videos, putting up an alarm clock display, and more. The Echo Spot looks good in any room in your house, which means it can be used as a timer in the kitchen or a video caller in the study. We would put it higher in the list but the display makes it significantly more expensive than alternatives such as the Echo Dot. For more details on each Amazon Echo device, check out the full reviews below:.

Google's smart speaker range is a little smaller than Amazon's, with six Google Home speakers to choose from, including the recently unveiled Google Nest Mini , the latest model in Google's partnership with smart home company, Nest.

Customize your voice-shopping settings

The smallest of the three is the Google Home Mini speaker. Like the Echo Dot, the speaker is puck shaped, if a little more pebble-like with softer edges, and has a top side covered in a fabric speaker mesh. You can pick up the Google Home Mini in a range of colors, with four flashing LED lights illustrating when it's listening to your commands and showing the volume level. Recently Google launched a follow up to its smallest smart speaker; the Google Nest Mini comes with three speakers that's one more than the original , and is made from recycled materials.

In the middle of the range taking on the Amazon Echo devices is the standard Google Home speaker, which looks considerably different to the Mini. It has the appearance of a small vase, with a two-tone color design multiple shades are available here too and a sloping top side that houses a touch control panel. The Google Home Max , meanwhile, looks much more like a traditional loudspeaker, and is the largest of the bunch — it doesn't really have an equivalent Amazon Echo device either. It's boxy in design, closer aesthetically to the Google Home Mini with the mesh speaker covering , and can stand in either a portrait or landscape orientation to suit the space you've got.

While the vanilla Google Home is an acquired taste in terms of design, both the Mini and Max are subtly attractive, and should fit into any surroundings without much concern. It can show videos, the weather, recipes, music artwork and so much more, but it doesn't have a camera — so video calling is out of the question. It's the first product to come out under the converged brand name of Google and smart home security brand Nest. Like a larger version of the Google Home Hub, the Nest Hub Max is big-screen smart display for your home, with a front-facing camera for video calls and the facility to check on your home remotely.

Keep in mind that, with both Alexa and Google Assistant, third-party speaker manufacturers are increasingly choosing to integrate the voice helpers into their own products. So, if there's an audio manufacturer you're particularly fond of, it may be worth holding out to see if it has any plans to join either of the smart ecosystems — at this point, it's highly likely that most all audio devices in the near future will come equipped with some sort of microphone and voice control system. Both Google and Amazon are committed, long term, to improving their respective voice platforms, and each has done a good job so far of enticing third-party smart device manufacturers — from thermostat makers to smart lighting companies — to make their products compatible with each service.

With a base level of commands available to each, with either a "hey Google" or "hey Alexa" wake command, control of the digital world is just a vibration of your vocal chords away. Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers do take a slightly different approach to the way their abilities are accessed.


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    8. Google Home's abilities are, by default, accessible to all — barring pairing up third-party smart home devices with your Google Home system, if you've made a request that the Google ecosystem can understand, it'l carry out the required response unprompted. Alexa, on the other hand, relies on the installation of skills — individual, app-like sets of related voice commands focussing on certain topics or abilities. Handled and activated through the Alexa app on smartphones, these can range from getting information on local transport times, or to activating voice-controlled games.

    There's no right or wrong approach really — Google's is simpler, but Alexa's encourages faster and broader development and support from third-parties. As you'd expect from such a wildly varying range of shapes and sizes, you get very different sound performance across both ecosystems, let alone when comparing Amazon Echo against Google Home in general. Here's a broad breakdown of how they sound in relation to each other. If you can only afford the entry-level devices, and music remains a top priority for you, go for the Google Home Mini, which sounds a lot better than the Echo Dot.

    Unless you hook up a Dot to another speaker over Bluetooth or the 3.

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    The new Google Nest Mini is set to sound even better too, withy the inclusion of an extra speaker. If you're looking for a small Echo speaker, your best best then is the Echo Spot, which despite its size, offers a richer sound. The screen, however, massively increases its expense, so bear that in mind — if you don't want a screen, the Echo Dot with Clock is an attractive option. As you move up the size scale, the Google Home is too bass-heavy to be truly enjoyable.

    It also has worse clarity than the latest generation of the Amazon Echo speaker and the Echo Plus. With a slight premium in price, and the inclusion of Dolby processing, the Echo Plus sound is more dynamic than the standard Echo, as you'd hope — the Echo Studio should improve on this further, and we'll be sure to update this article as soon as we've tested it thoroughly.

    And, despite its looks, the Echo Show sounds better than the Echo Plus and Echo, though not so dramatically as to forgive it some of its other failings. If you're going for pure sonic superiority between the Echo and Google Home ranges however, opt for the Google Home Max. Its bass is well tuned, its mids and highs well defined, and its top volume levels loud without verging into highly distorted territory. Google, on the other hand, sits somewhere in the middle. There's no easy answer to the question of whether you should go for Amazon Echo or Google Home as your smart speakers of choice.

    Both lines are very accomplished and, so long as you temper your expectations in line with the amount of money you're going to spend on buying into one of the lines, all sound good enough for their respective price points. The choice really then comes down to the preference of ecosystem as opposed to the hardware. Are you heavily invested in Google's services?


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      4. Then Google Home is probably for you, as the two areas are only going to become ever-more-closely linked. Google's natural language understanding is superior too, even if its voice implementation still needs some refinement.