Google Home review

Price When Reviewed

$99

Best Prices Today: Google Home

Smart speakers are no longer a new product category, and most people are now familiar with the commands “Okay Google”, “Alexa” and “Hey Siri”.

First announced in May 2016, the original Google Home is now three years old – and it’s still one of the best smart speakers on the market.

With subsequent releases from Google including the cheaper Google Home Mini, audiophile-league Google Home Max, and smart display Google Home Hub (now Google Nest Hub), the first Google Home remains the best all-rounder for features, audio and value.

Amazon still has the hold on the smart speaker market, but we think the Google Assistant integrated to Google Home devices is the best voice assistant around. With the backing of the daddy of online search, it is the most competent at answering questions and providing useful information, and the most capable of holding natural conversations and understanding requests. It can even make jokes.

New features have been added since launch, and through Google Assistant the Google Home is now able to provide a personalised experience for up to six family members, recognising each by their voice. It has wider support for audio subscription services, can function as a Bluetooth speaker ( or work with a Bluetooth speaker), and you can even use it to make free calls over Wi-Fi.

Though Amazon has since released a second-generation version of its Amazon Echo speaker, we’re still waiting for a Google Home 2. However, the original has now been reduced from £129 to £89 (available from Google,  Argos, Currys and John Lewis) to match Amazon’s pricing.

So what is Google Home?

Google describes its Home device as a hands-free smart speaker. Always-on, it wakes to the commands “Okay, Google” or “Hey, Google”, and though you can’t currently change this wake-up command you can alternatively tap the centre of its capacitive-touch top surface should you begin to get a little tongue-twisted.

It plays music, sure, but doing so isn’t merely a case of hooking up your phone via Bluetooth and using it to blare out tunes. You can stream music via online radio services, Google Play Music, Deezer or Spotify Free/Premium, or Cast-enabled apps.

Google Home is best thought of as the physical home of the Google Assistant voice assistant that debuted in Android Nougat on the Pixel and Pixel XL. 

It’s not yet as intelligent as the Assistant demoed during Google’s presentation, which could find a restaurant and place a reservation on your behalf, but it is possible to hold a conversation with Home. You might ask it, for example, where the nearest pharmacy is and then separately when they close, and thanks to the ‘Continued Conversation’ functionality you no longer need to say “OK, Google” in between.

Today, Home is a voice-operated speaker that can answer any question for which you might Google the answer – whether or not you need an umbrella, how long it will take you to get to work, what are the latest headlines, where you should go for dinner and even the answers to complicated mathematical sums. In most cases it’s clever enough to understand natural language, though trying to get it to do too much at once can confuse things.

It’s more than that, though. Tying into a Google account it can tell you what’s on the calendar for your day, add items to your Google Keep shopping list, and even pull up a slideshow of images from Google Photos via Chromecast.

Google Home can set alarms and timers, and create reminders. If you have any other smart-home tech installed in your home chances are it can control that, too.

Google still needs to nail down more third-party partnerships, but Home is already compatible with popular smart devices such as Philips Hue, Nest, Samsung SmartThings and WeMo, while IFTTT support and  Google Routines means there may well be a simple workaround for devices not on the list.

Using IFTTT we were able to use Google Home to complete tasks it isn’t technically able to do yet – send a text message to one of our contacts via an Android phone, for example, send an email via Gmail, or modify its answer upon completion of a task (you really can get it to say anything you want). More practically, through IFTTT Google Home was able to turn on and off lights and switches in our home using a service that previously not tied in by default (this has since been amended).

Google Home has a fun side too, and will happily tell you a joke or a fun fact, attempt to beatbox and even host a game of Trivia or Crystal Maze. It will sing you Happy Birthday, ably demonstrate various animal noises and appeal to your childish side by giving you audible definitions of any term you like. Just tell it you’re bored and see what happens.

Check out these great Google Home accessories.

Design and build

It’s very rare that you would find yourself wanting to buy a bad-looking piece of consumer tech, but for smart-home tech appearance is more important than ever. And especially for a device such as this, which by its very nature will become a talking point in your home.

Google has done a great job designing Home to blend into any environment. It’s a reasonably compact device that stands just 142.8mm high and weighs 477g. It has an angled white matte plastic top half and a coloured mesh base that conceals the speaker. Compare it to the tall black cylindrical tower that is Amazon Echo and we know which we prefer.

These bases are interchangeable, magnetically snapping into place, so you can swap the grey slate version that comes in the box for a coloured fabric (£18) or metal (£36) base that may more comfortably slip into its surroundings. Fabric bases are available in Mango, Marine and Violet, and metal bases in Carbon, Copper and Snow.

No buttons are visible from the top, but with capacitive touch you can tap a finger on its centre or say “Okay, Google” to activate a ring of Google-brand-coloured LEDs that show you it’s listening. By drawing a circular gesture around this area you can also adjust the volume.

Our home is clean (OCD bleaching clean), but we did find dust collected rather quickly on top of the speaker – and that’s not ideal if people are routinely going to be wanting to take a closer look. But we have a duster, we can deal with that.

Google Home is wireless in terms of its connection to the internet and to your devices, but to power the device itself you’ll need an available mains socket.

As power cables go, Google Home’s is largely inoffensive – white in colour, reasonably short in length, and with a neat white Google-branded plug to sit in the socket. That said, if you can hide it out of view then you should – Google Home is designed to be left on at all times, so there’s no need to be able to quickly access the socket.

Just a single button can be found on Google Home, with a mute button for the mic at the rear.

The speaker itself is reasonably powerful, if not the loudest compact speaker you’ll find, with a 2in driver and twin 2in passive radiators. In this respect the Google Home is useful if only as a kitchen radio. If you want to ramp up the audio quality, just pair a Bluetooth speaker.

It can stream any online radio service, and if you have a nearby Android device (which needn’t be associated with the same Google account as Home) you will see a notification pop up that allows you to also control playback via TuneIn.

The twin mics are also competent, and with far-field voice recognition it can pick up commands even if you’re not in the same room. But whereas Google Home has two, Amazon Echo has seven.

Background noise can complicate things, of course, and we often found it stumbled if we tried to task it to do multiple things at once. Often times you’ll get a more accurate response if you pause audio before asking a question, for example – we found it more likely to misinterpret our mumbling at such times. But the fact is every so often you will need to ask it to do something twice, or to re-phrase your original request. It’s like a kid, and it’s still learning.

Naturally there will be areas within your home where you can’t hear the speaker or Google Home can’t hear you. It’s possible to connect multiple Home speakers to create multi-room audio, which works seamlessly in our tests.

Must I subscribe to Google services to use Google Home?

Most of what Google Home does it does without requiring additional services. You can set up Home using either Android or iOS (versions 4.2+ and 8.0+ respectively), simply by downloading the free Google Home app and following the instructions.

You don’t need to be using Google apps on your iPhone to make use of the Google Assistant, though you will need to set up a Google account. Chances are you already have one anyway.

Google Home can support up to six different Google accounts, and recognise each user by their voice and serve up information relevant to their preferences. In practice we’ve found this works well for male users, though it struggles to differentiate between the female voices in our household.

If you want Google Home to be able to read appointments in your calendar, work out how long it will take you to get to work or add an item to your shopping list then naturally certain Google apps will need to be installed. However, there are really just two instances that stand out to us as requiring subscriptions: music and video. Both you can get around, though, so don’t be put off just yet.

Music is arguably most important, since in its most basic form this is a speaker – a smart speaker, sure, but a speaker nonetheless.

Google Home comes with a free three-month Google Music subscription, but if you wish to continue with the service after this period it will cost you £9.99 per month.

Google Music is great, with a gigantic music library from which you can play whatever song you like on whatever device you like, provided it’s signed into your Google account. But at £120 a year, it costs nearly as much as your initial outlay on Google Home. And if you already subscribe to other unlimited music services you will unlikely be keen on the extra cost.

It’s worth pointing out that Google Home can alternatively work with Deezer, Spotify Premium, and Spotify Free, and it supports Bluetooth audio so you can stream music from your phone no matter which service you’re using.

So if you don’t subscribe to a music streaming service, what can you play via Google Home? For a start there’s radio, and as we’ve mentioned any online radio service can be streamed via TuneIn – just say “Okay, Google, stream Capital FM’ or whatever service you require. And you can Cast content from supported apps.

As for audio purchased via or uploaded to Google Music, this is accessible only if it is featured within a playlist. You have minimal control over the playlist, so you won’t be able to choose a certain song within that group. To play a playlist you say “Okay, Google, play [name of playlist]”.

You can play videos on YouTube via Chromecast, provided you know their names, or you can ask for a less general type of content such as funny videos. 

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can also tell Google Home to play a specific video via Chromecast. Once again, though, that will require an additional cost.

Verdict

The original and standard Google Home is arguably still one of the best, carefully balancing decent audio quality with great functionality to achieve an incredible price.

It’s true that it now sees competition within its own home, with Google Home Max besting it on sound (at a much higher price), and Nest Hub adding a display but sacrificing audio quality. Google Home Mini is cheaper too, but if you love the Mini this is the device you’ll want to buy next.

Google Home answers all our questions, keeps us entertained and up to date, and even turns on and off our lights. It is quite literally one of the best and most exciting talking points our home has seen.

Best Prices Today: Google Home