Google Home versus Amazon Alexa

Buy a Sonos One and try both!

Mmh, Does it support Dutch? And then I need to find a sponsor as this is of course much more expensive.

Google is in Dutch yes.

I have both, Echo wins. Speech is awesome and also controlling devices works

Google Home is dutch thats nice but no voice support (native) and broadcasting doesnt work.

The latest Google assistant and Homey has native support no?

Errm, i think you might have missed something the last 2 weeks…

Is this already live as I though it was promised some ware around the summer…

I have it in Dutch yes.

They are currently both really similar,

  • Google just released is new 2019 line up, Amazon don’t release theirs until November
  • New google line up (specifically the nest home) is cool, but scarey
  • google has your facial ID
  • Amazon & google have your voice print
  • Google is much better at contextual questions
  • Alexa is getting support for conjunctions (Google already has it?)
  • Google are A-holes and once your hooked into the eco system may trap you into it. (re: what they did with nest).
  • The echo spot is perhaps the best smart home device I own.
  • Saying “Hey google” to active the device is REALLY lame.

Really its personal preference, people talk about using the system which you have the devices for - which is wrong. When buying new devices make sure they work in BOTH systems. Then you can always change later on if one of them becomes clearly superior.

my preference is Google assistant/home but I think this forum tends to be pro Alexa.

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The biggest reason i’m pro Alexa is that i can send notifications from Homey to my Echo device.

Not doable on GHome

Nice. can you use Homey to trigger Alexa to do things?

Controlling Alexa smart home devices from Homey and triggering alexa routines is currently in ‘testing’.

Odd I have had opposite experience in this forum, i’ve found people to be more pro google. I think it has something to do with language support in Scandinavia

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This sounds tempting, and the Google assistant is working with the Google App or Sonos?

I bought an Amazon echo gen 3 just to try it with Homey, but hated it and sold it again. There aren’t so many supported devices (if I remember correctly, my curtains, airconditioning and thermostat weren’t manageable with Alexa, lights didn’t work 30% of the time).

I also didn’t like the Alexa app on my phone. And had troubles with Spotify. I could ask Alexa to “play music by Afrojack”, but not “Play music by Daft punk”, Michael Jackson or around 10 other artists that I asked. Which I found weird.

I think Google home is the better choice at this moment, although I didn’t test that. Siri / Homekit also works very well, also in Dutch!

but with limited functionality, you cant use alexa routines with the sonos one

I fully agree!

pro Alexa :heart_eyes:

See its all completely anecdotal …

Toms Guide released an update to their head to head this week : you can read the full article here

Spoiler : Google and Alexa ended up both with 26 points (and siri sucks).

There’s still no one-size-fits-all winner among voice assistants. Your best pick is the one that succeeds at the categories most important to you and works with the devices you want, in the ecosystem you use. And with the rapid pace of innovation in all of these technologies, it’s hard to go wrong by spending time with any of these voice assistants — even if none of them knows when exactly my bus will get here.


Just to back up what @azid said be really careful with ‘third party’ devices … in my experience they lack a lot of the refinement of ‘official’ items. (Ecobee cant use spotify (just amazon music/radio/pandora), Netgear Orbi (harman/kardon) cant be in a music group, Sonos One cant use routines).

I guess it depends on what you do. I really hated Alexa (although the voice recognition is good), I don’t use Siri for anything other than settings timers and controlling devices and that really works well.

Ofcourse a lot of devices suddenly have Homekit support because of Homey, that makes a huge difference.

Since we all use Android phones and the google assistant, the choice for Google Home and some mini’s was evident. I was impressed by the speech recognition of the Home from the start, it almost never misses a question or command and if it does it is mostly because the TV is too loud or someone doesn’t speak up hard enough. Given the fact that we all speak English very well, there was no need to have support for Dutch language. Even now we still use English.

We use Google throughout the house for switching WiFi plugs, Chrome-cast controlling, calendar, setting timers and reminders, weather info, intercom etc. I already used it in combination with Homey but the “ask homey” part was a bit unnatural. Since it’s native however, even the wife and kids are getting more used to use the Home for spoken commands to Homey to control Z-wave plugs, lights and flows.

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Thanks all, I have decided to buy a Google Home. It works great. Voice recognition is really great! Need to find a a few things how it is working like, when I say turn all the lights off (my variable in BL will not go to Lamps = NO)?? Any tips :slight_smile: