Shortly after introducing the touch-screen-equipped Echo Show, Amazon revealed new abilities for the existing Echo, including voice calls and messages. Not to be outdone, Google just announced a number of major new features for its voice-activated speaker, the Google Home, including Bluetooth audio, hands-free calling, and deeper TV integration.
The Amazon Echo has long been our Editors' Choice, but considering both speakers have seen substantial upgrades, how do they stack up now? Let's compare. For the sake of this article, we're sticking to the original Amazon Echo, rather than the Echo Dot or the Tap.
Design
The original Amazon Echo is a minimal cylinder that measures 9.25 inches tall and 3.27 inches around and weighs 2.34 pounds. It's a bit tall for shelves but otherwise unobtrusive. It comes in black or white.
The lower half of the Echo is covered in tiny perforations for the speaker grille, while the top half has a volume ring that lights up whenever Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, is activated. It has two buttons: one that turns the microphone off, and a multipurpose Action button.
By comparison, the Google Home (pictured below) measures 5.62 inches tall and 3.79 inches around. It weighs 1.05 pounds, and it comes in white, with swappable bases available in several colors and materials, including carbon, copper, snow, mango, marine, slate, and violet.
The Home's aesthetic is inspired by candles and wine glasses, with a top half made of smooth, hard plastic that lights up with LEDs in four colors when it's listening. It also has a touch interface you can use to play and pause music, change volume, and activate Google Assistant. On the back there's a physical Mute button.
Neither design is going to blow you away, but thanks to its smaller size and multiple color options, the Google Home is the more versatile option.
Sound Quality
The Home provides richer, more well-rounded sound than the Echo does, although it doesn't get as loud—there's a 3-4dB difference in maximum volume at a one-foot distance. The Home delivers much better sound quality than the Amazon Echo Dot or Tap.
Until its latest update, the Home didn't work as a standard Bluetooth speaker. Google recently added this feature, which puts it on a much more even playing field with the Echo family. This means the Home can now play anything stored on your mobile device or in a private library over Bluetooth, just like the Echo can.
Both devices support iHeartRadio, Pandora, and Spotify. The Echo also supports Amazon Music, while the Home supports Google Play Music, TuneIn Radio, and YouTube Red.
Voice Control
The speakers use voice activation to control music playback, searches, and supported smart home devices. To activate the Echo (pictured below), say "Hey, Alexa" or simply "Alexa" or "Amazon." For the Home it's "OK, Google" or "Hey, Google." Both speakers can hear you, and can be heard, from a comfortable 50-foot distance.
Google Assistant is better at giving you information from the web. Alexa is better at shopping-related queries. Both can do things like spell words, set timers, and read you the news. Google Assistant is more conversational: It will often remember what you were talking about or let you carry ideas throughout a conversation. For instance, if you ask, "Who was the leading actor in Taken?," you can follow up with, "What other movies was he in?"
Smart Home
The Google Home controls many more smart home brands than it did at launch, but Amazon still has the edge. The Home handles August, Belkin Wemo, Frigidaire, Honeywell, Insignia, Lifx, Logitech Harmony, Next, Philips, Rachio, Samsung, TP-Link, and Wink, along with anything with a Chromecast attached to it. The Echo supports all of those except Chromecast, but adds Blink, Carrier, DigitalStrom, Haiku, Leviton, Lowe's Iris, Lutron, Netatmo, and many other kinds of devices.
The Home has an edge in TV integration. In addition to working with your Chromecast, Google now supports a number of streaming services, including HBO Now and Hulu, that enable you to call up shows by voice. With the Echo, you need to connect it to a Logitech Harmony Hub.
Unique Features
The Echo and Home connect to your home Wi-Fi network. In testing, the Home had weaker Wi-Fi connectivity than the Echo. We were able to use the Echo in some places the Home just couldn't reach.
And while the Home now has 200 third-party skills, letting you order pizzas from Domino's and cars from Uber, Alexa has more than 11,000. Some of those Alexa skills even handle Google accounts better than Google's own system does; Alexa can add events to your Google Calendar and extract travel details from Gmail, which the Home can't do.
Alexa now has voice calling, which lets you ask Alexa to call or send a message to anyone with a supported Echo device or the Alexa App for free. Google Assistant, meanwhile, now supports free voice calls to actual phone numbers without the need for a phone. You can add a number to your account, but it's optional.
Google has superior multi-user and multi-room functions. The Home can recognize up to six people's voices and seamlessly switch between their accounts and preferences. You have to tell Echo specifically, "switch account to X," to switch accounts. The Home can also synchronize audio between rooms, while Alexa can't.
A Closer Call Than Ever
The Google Home costs $129, while the original Amazon Echo is more expensive, at $179.99. However, the Echo Dot only costs $50, and the Amazon Tap, a portable Bluetooth speaker, is $100.
The Echo, and especially the small, inexpensive Echo Dot, remain our choice for voice-activated speakers over the Google Home—but by an increasingly small margin. While the Google Home is more attractive and has better overall sound quality as a speaker, it can't yet beat Amazon's huge and swiftly expanding ecosystem of third-party skills and support. Things are clearly changing rapidly, however, and we'll update this story as new features are added.