Canadian with a question regarding Echo and google home

I posted this to the reddit sub but thought I might copy/paste it here to see if anyone else has some thoughts. Wasn’t too sure what category it belonged in so mods, move this at will. Thanks in advance:

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As the title says, Canadian here who is about to have (rare for me) access to American stores and thus the Echo and/or Google Home (my parents are taking a trip down to Spokane). So my question is, and I know there are other similar threads and I have read them, what do you guys recommend?
I don’t want to break the bank but because my access to these products is limited thanks to lack of Canadian releases I don’t want to squander this opportunity. I am looking more at the long game here so that makes the call between the two even more difficult.
Do I go with Google Home and hope things shape up and Google runs with this line long term. Or do I go with the Echo which seems more proven but maybe won’t be the better option a year from now (hypothesizing).
Also, I live in a two story, fairly large home and have no real interest in the Echo beyond voice commands. If I go the Echo route, is a Dot per floor enough? And I don’t need a “real” Echo to make use of the Dot’s, right?

The long game here is truly difficult to predict but if you’re more interested in voice commands than search or consuming Google services, go with the Dot. And you can use just Dots; you don’t need an Echo to use them.

I don’t think that you’ll regret the purchase even as Home improves.

I started with the Echo, then used HASS, and have since added a Dot. Honestly, other than the higher quality speaker in Echo, I wish I just had more Dots.

I share your curiousness of Google Home (as every cellphone I have is Android/Google) but Amazon’s devices have been very satisfying for my home and family.

As far as how many you would need, it really is determined by the openness and ambient noise levels you would have. I have a single floor home and have the Echo on one side and the Dot on the other and have been happy although I may add another Dot just to have better triangulation due to TV volumes (kids listen to it loud lol).

Yeah, looking like grabbing a few Dots is the way to go for me. Thanks.

Is there any issue with having Dots too close together and causing weird results or anything? Like, if two are in earshot of each other, I mean.

A recent fix is supposed to help when you have multiple echos within earshot. I just did a quick test and it seems to be working - only the nearest responds.

I have an Echo, a Dot and recently, a Google Home.

Echo and Dot are better in the short-term for interfacing with HASS. The Alexa skill is pretty easy to set up and can do a lot of cool stuff.

Home may get there, but currently the only way to have Home interface with HASS is via IFTTT.

BTW - Home is a lot better at answering more-complex questions. It’s become the “question-answerer” of choice in our home.

Interesting. Out of curiosity, what types of questions are you asking Home that Echo can’t handle? Things I can see being useful would be quick conversions (imperial to/from metric), distance and driving time to places, etc. Oh, and can I add things directly to lists, Google Keep or otherwise, with Alexa? That seems to be all my wife cares about: “Alexa, we’re out of effin milk again!” kinda stuff :wink:

I asked it how many episodes there are in the current season of Walking Dead and it had an answer. The conversations where it keeps track of context is nice (Who’s that actor from xxx. How old is he? - it knows who you mean by “he”).

Both are great with the unit conversions and measurement stuff. Both do well with weather/temp.

Sounds good, thanks for your help.

In Canada as well, just bought a Home yesterday, patiently waiting for it to be delivered next week. I bought it knowing it won’t fully integrate at this time or ever for that matter. I’m heavily investing in the Google universe so I gambled. It remains to be seen if it pays off.

No, in fact they work great even in rooms next to each other. I have an echo and three dots and my house is not that large. They all play very well with each other.

I also have a Google Home. They aren’t the magic answer box everyone likes to assume they are though. I did experiments with Echo and Home with last nights elections and Echo responded with more answers and more quality data than Home did every time. Home will get better at this than Echo, and at a much faster rate but there are still some things one device can answer that another device balks at and vice versa.

The real decider is service platform and available support for devices. If you aren’t using it for anything but kitchen timers and home automation and the occasional question AND you use Amazon services like Prime, you’re better off with the Echo/Dot. If you use Google services and search is your thing AND you don’t need broad device support like right now, then it’s worth it for you to check out Google Home.

Ultimately you have to make this decision based on your needs - reviews and comments here should only give you data to make a decision. Everyone’s needs are unique - just take a look at HomeAssistant as an example. It supports as many platforms as it does because due to special needs, regional differences, etc. there is no one ‘right’ decision.

And that’s why I bought both. :slight_smile:

Fellow Canadian here who just went through the same thing.

I’ve been wanting for a while to get an Amazon Echo to add voice capability to my HASS setup. When the Google Home came out, I wasn’t sure to go with google (big name in ai) or Amazon. In the end where Amazon is open for coding skills and is well established (released for over 1!year) the best decision was the Echo system. The Dot is just brilliant, and cheap. I have two of them currently and wish I had another one or two more just to cover the full range of my house. Even the tap looks interesting since it has built in speaker.

Like someone mentioned above, it comes down to whether or not you want a device to talk to and query info from the web. If you do, Google Home without a doubt. If you want an open/adaptable software API, go Echo (Dot recommended).

Thanks again, everyone, for all the great insight. A few Dots throughout the house looks like it will be the route I go.

Once you get your Dots, here’s a great post to get you started.