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The Home's far-field microphone is about as effective as the Echo's -- just be sure to speak clearly to either device if you have a complex command. Most of the time, I talked to the Home without hassle from across the large great room in the CNET Smart Home, a distance of roughly 40 feet . The Home heard me from adjacent rooms as well, given clear line of sight, and it even heard me through one wall -- although I do have a booming voice. The feature works well, and it'll show the recipient that it's you calling if you enable that function in the app. It also makes use of voice recognition for these calls, so you or your spouse can say "call Mom" and it'll look specifically in your contacts and call the right mom.
The first device that I’ve seen to use this is the Nest Hello. With announcements turned on, a press on the doorbell will let you know through your smart speakers that someone’s at the door. Individual speakers can be opted out of announcements. Calls are made over the internet using Google’s telephony service. Call quality is excellent and as good as making a call using a strong mobile signal.
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As opposed to just rattling through the instructions like it did at launch, the Home can wait until you tell it that you're ready for the next ingredient or step, and skip forward and back in the directions. That list doesn't touch on what the Home can do as an entertainment device or a smart home controller -- more on both in just a bit. In the settings, you can equip two languages such as English and Spanish at the same time and it'll recognize commands in both interchangeably. Clearly the lack of integration into Google’s own services is a huge issue. The fact that it can’t shoot an email to someone in your contacts or help you schedule events through Google Calendar are massive oversights that vastly reduce how useful the Home could be.
The Google Home is a great smart speaker with a ton of capabilities, but you have so many smart speaker options at this point that I'm less inclined to recommend this well balanced middle child. There’s also the issue that although the Home is more ambitious with its media playback, it hasn’t worked out a way for you to access this functionality in a way that’s simple enough to be done with your voice. There’s little point in having all that functionality when it’s a chore to use. Admittedly, this lack of contextual awareness isn’t something that Alexa deals with – which is surprising considering that the Echo doesn’t come from the company with 20-plus years of search engine experience.
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The speaker utilizes an array of six far-field mics to pick up your voice commands from a distance. The Google Home Max is the first smart speaker we've seen with serious audio performance. Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks.

This feature is particularly handy when you’ve left your phone somewhere and want to make a call. It’s also useful if you don’t get a lot of minutes with your mobile plan. Please note that incoming calls are not broadcast to your Google Home devices, as this feature would be a lot harder to implement. Google Home is a powerful smart speaker, powered by the smartest voice assistant and a growing range of smart device support. But, on its own, the Google Home Mini shouldn’t be used as much more than a desk buddy. It’s more than enough if you’re simply using it to get a glimpse at your calendar, hear the latest news or phone a friend with its free voice calling .
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Thanks to the Google Assistant you can voice interact with this speaker with pretty casual conversational language and it'll understand what you're saying nearly every time. The man sitting back expressionless doesn’t hate it but it’s not really something you’d encourage others to spend money on. This isn’t how people talk, let alone Navi people raised in a traditional tribe! The writing feels much worse than in the first Avatar and that film didn’t have particularly compelling dialogue to begin with.
Of course, Google Home isn't 100 percent accurate all the time. Instances when unrelated answers or unwanted actions would come up typically had to deal with words or phrases that sound similar. Questions about Bruno Mars would occasionally bring up info about the planet, and asking it to play "Pop Hits" always brought up a "Soft Hits" playlist. When streaming something from Netflix, "play the movie from the beginning" would result in her saying that she can't do it, but "restart the movie" would work as intended. Google's virtual assistant can also comprehend multi-part and continuous conversations.
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The minimal, clean layout of Google Home mimics the company's other services. While we prefer the tighter interface of Netvibes, that experience was marred by frequently broken feeds. Among the home pages we tested, Google Home and My Yahoo loaded the most quickly, while Windows Live.com suffered the longest delays. If you already frequent Google.com to look up stuff on the Web, why not fill the vast white space on that page with news you read and online tools you need? Google Home, a personal Web page service, can wrap together all sorts of content so that you don't have to type long URLs and visit multiple Web sites. Sound quality is significantly better with the Nest Audio, specifically bass reproduction.
Google Home is easy to set up and maintain; organizes feeds within a clean page layout; integrates Google tools and third-party content. Again, you need either a Chromecast streamer or a TV with Chromecast built-in to make any of this work. If you have that, the Home actually makes voice-controlled TV doable. Andrew loves writing about cool, futuristic technology. He's reviewed everything from vacuum cleaners to beer brewing robots in pursuit of the perfect smart home. He wants the smart home to make him feel powerful, and it's getting there.
In addition, a just-announced “continued conversation” feature allows you to ask a follow-up question while having a conversation with Google Assistant without having to repeat “Ok Google” or “Hey Google”. Alexa has a similar ability, called “follow-up mode,” but you have enable it in the Alexa app. Both speakers support hands-free calls thanks to their integrated microphone systems, but the Nest Audio improves upon the Google Home’s dual-microphone array with its three-microphone array. Neither system is professional-grade, but the Nest Audio transmits clearer audio. Google greatly improved upon the Google Home with the Nest Audio.

The printer is built with a two-tone matte gray-black plastic body, and it has a sleek look that will fit in with most office environments. At $329.99, it’s not only a solid option for small offices, but also for homes that need something a little more advanced. Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
A lack of contextual awareness is also a massive problem for its Google Cast functionality right now. Be prepared to reiterate where you want your music to play from a lot when using Google Home. Google has a dozen services that the Home should be able to link into and yet, in its current state, simply cannot. Not only is this a big disappointment, but it makes us wonder why this functionality wasn't given more of a priority.

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