Amazon Echo 2 vs Google Home vs Apple HomePod: Which smart speaker should you make the centre of your smart home?

In the battle between the Google Home and Amazon Echo, the two tech giants keep releasing features and products in an attempt to either copy, or outdo, the other. With Google‘s announcement of the Google Home Hub, Google is taking this fight to a new level.

The device introduces a screen to the smartspeaker formula, which lets you watch videos and monitor parts of your home. This means the Google Assistant has a slew of new functions, including finding recipes for you to follow and choosing photos to display when not in use.

Of course this announcement means cuts in price to other Home products, which in turn means its competitors will cut prices or announce new features too.

This is just another example of how it’s getting increasingly difficult to pick between the two.

Our comparison begins below

So you’ve decided you have room for a digital assistant in your house. That’s great: welcome to the future. But do you want to entrust your digital life to the Amazon Echo 2, the Google Home or the Apple HomePod? All three either are excellent in their own ways, but which company should get your hard-earned cash?

Google Home vs Amazon Echo 2 vs Apple HomePod: Appearance

For three products that essentially do the same thing, Amazon, Google and Apple have come up with remarkably different looking products. Although the second generation Echo looks a bit more like the Home than the previous. 

Let’s start with the Amazon Echo 2. Cylindrical, and the shape of a giant tin of beans, the speaker looks self consciously space age if you buy it in its metal finish, or more like a speaker if you plump for grey mesh. It lights up brightly when spoken to, and it would be pretty hard to hide – though if you’ve just spent over £80 on a speaker, that might well be what you want.

READ NEXT: Best Alexa Skills versus Best Google Home commands

The Google Home, on the other hand, does its best to blend into the family home, and it does a remarkably good job of it. I’ve been moving it around the house as I write this piece, and I’m surprised at how neatly it fits into whatever room it currently resides on – be it a kitchen shelf next to the spice rack, or on the living room table. It too lights up when spoken to, but in a far less obvious way.

You can also get different skins for the Google Home, to make it blend in further with your decor, while the Amazon Echo 2 comes in a variety of finishes that cannot be changed.

The HomePod looks like a mesh barrel, not a million miles away to something from Pop Up Pirate. It comes in just two colours, and you can’t add skins to it. 

I’m giving Google Home the nod here because, with the extra skins, you can make it as attention-seeking or camouflaged as you see fit.

Winner: Google Home

Google Home vs Amazon Echo 2 vs Apple HomePod: Sound quality

First off, I should say the Amazon Echo’s sound quality is technically as good as you want it to be. That’s because both the second generation version and smaller Echo Dot can be connected to any speaker, either via 3.5mm jack. But for the purposes of this section, let’s assume we’re talking the default sound of the full sized Echo 2 against the Google Home and the Apple HomePod.

Between Amazon and Google, to my ears the Amazon Echo 2 wins this particular bout. Google Home is a little more bass heavy and offers a slightly muggier, less clear sound overall. It’s also worth noting that while the Echo can be paired to a phone with Bluetooth to play any sound files you like, Google Home cannot be. While you can stream your Google Home to a Chromecast Audio for better sound quality, it’s a bit of a faff and requires you to spend an extra £20 on the adapter.

But Apple’s HomePod is just a whole different ballgame to both. It’s not really fair to put them on the same playing field. As Jon wrote in his  review: “In back-to-back tests, where we were played the same tracks on ‘volume levelled’ Amazon Echo 2, Sonos One, Harman-Kardon Allure and Apple HomePod speakers, the Apple HomePod won hands down.

It sounded sweeter, with better instrument separation, a wider soundstage and better bass and it wasn’t a fair fight, with only the Harman-Kardon getting close.”

A clear winner, then. Well done Apple.

Winner: Apple HomePod

Google Home vs Amazon Echo 2 vs Apple HomePod: Voice recognition and smarts

Rather than taking my word for it, you can just download the apps to your Android phone and find out for yourself. Both Google Assistant and Alexa have their own apps which allow you to chat away in the same way as you would with a speaker, and Siri is built into every speaker. You can test which recognises your accent and answers your questions better without spending a penny. 

One of the big advantages of these cloud-based virtual assistants is that they’re learning all the time and as such voice recognition just keeps improving. That said, for me, I’ve found Google Home much better at picking out words than Amazon Echo. Trying to get Alexa to play a REM playlist took about ten goes. Now to be fair, initials make for an odd word for assistants to recognise – nonetheless, Google Home recognised it much faster.

In terms of overall smarts, Google Home is a lot more clever. You can ask it all kinds of things, and it reads out an extract of a page from its search results with full citation. Echo does this occasionally, but it’s less effective. For example, when I asked Google Home “what was Derby County’s last score,” it correctly told me they drew 1-1 with Rotherham United. Alexa, bizarrely, told me about Derby losing 3-1 to Leicester several months’ prior. More often then not, it’s left stumped by questions.

But even when they both come up with the same answers, Google Home is generally more effective. If I ask Google Home how many hairs a cat has, I get the answer “On the website catsinfo.com they say there are approximately 60,000 hairs per square inch on the back of a cat, and approximately 100,000 per square inch on its underside.” The Echo, meanwhile says “A cat has 60,000 hairs.” Same answer source, presumably, but one is completely wrong: unless your cat is molting pretty badly.

This intelligence battle has been confirmed by research from 360i, which put the two smart speakers to the test with a series of 3,000 questions. The results were clear: Google Home was six times more likely to answer the question effectively than Amazon Echo.

And as for HomePod? The microphone array picks up voice commands from a few metres away even with the music turned up and it can tell you about the music you’re playing. Ask it “who is the drummer on this track?”, for example, or for more information about the label and it finds the answers with ease. You can also ask HomePod to queue songs in a way the Amazon Echo and Google Home can’t. 

It’s not perfect, it often struggled with changes in band lineups, for example, and gave the names of old drummers rather than the one on a track, but that’s a minor thing. Plus, it doesn’t come with the search weight of Google’s mammoth engine. Overall, it doesn’t have the smarts of either of its competitors, as Jon said in his review. That may change over time, but for now, it’s another win for Google.

Winner: Google Home

Continues on page 2

Google Home vs Amazon Echo 2 vs Apple HomePod: Services

All three smart speakers have a growing list of services that integrate neatly into the platform – and of course, some will remain exclusive to them. The Echo is particularly good if you are an Amazon Prime member, as you can order things and get a cheap Amazon Music Unlimited subscription as part of the overall package.

By that same token, if you’re a Googler, then Google Home offers some very useful extras. The best of these is Chromecast integration. You can boss around YouTube using only your voice, which is quite a neat party trick. If you’re on of those strange people that uses Google Play Music for all your musical needs (like me), then you’ll be right at home here too.

Neither Amazon nor Google seems to have great faith in their music platforms being a big draw though, as both include Spotify support, sensibly.

Other than that, the two are very evenly matched, with third parties wisely choosing to pitch their abilities to both speakers. For now, with the Google Home relatively new to market, the Amazon Echo has the edge – it could well be that its lead is short lived though, so watch this space.

Oh, and all three speakers support IFTTT, meaning the ability to create your own commands is only really limited by your imagination. 

Apple HomePod, unsurprisingly, links all of Apple’s services – and if you’re an Apple Music user, it’s functionality is particularly strong, able to tell you who plays drums on a given track, for example – but this limits its wide appeal. 

Winner: Amazon Echo

Google Home vs Amazon Echo 2 vs Apple HomePod: Joke telling

This is obviously the most important benchmark. Both Google Home and Amazon Alexa will tell you a joke if you ask them to. It’s like having your very own personal court jester to entertain you at will.

We’re not sure if the HomePod cracks funnies. We tried testing with Siri directly on an iPhone in the office, and got a distinctly unfunny response:

So back to Echo and Home. Which is funnier? Here’s a best of three from both of them.

Alexa:

“What has eight wheels and flies?”
“A rubbish truck”

Google:

“I said to the gym instructor, ‘can you teach me to do the splits? He said ‘sure – how flexible are you?’ I said I can’t do Tuesdays.”

Alexa:

“Why did the American football coach shake the vending machine?”
“Because he needed a quarterback.”

Google:

“What do you call a microbiologist in an orchestra?”
“A cellist”

Alexa:

“Why is six afraid of seven?”
“Because seven ate/eight nine”

Google:

Did you hear the one about the chicken crossing the road?
It was poultry in motion

Okay, so neither is likely to kill the room in an open mic night, but I’m going to give this one to Google. Partly because I think the jokes are marginally better, but also because it has more flexibility in its structure, rather than the question and answer format.

Winner: Google Home

Google Home vs Amazon Echo vs Apple HomePod: Price

There was a time when the Amazon Echo was the more expensive model: that’s no longer the case. While the original Echo retailed at £149.99, the Echo 2 comes in at £89.99 – a good £40 saving on the Google Home at £129.99. You could really push the boat out and buy the Echo Plus for £149.99, which has enhanced sound quality and works as a smart home hub, but most people will be fine with the standard model. 

But if you already have a perfectly good dumb speaker – or even a decent Bluetooth speaker – then you can just get the Echo Dot for £49.99 for the same functionality, and possibly better sound. The Google Home Mini also retails for £49.99, but for some boneheaded reason doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack, so is a non-starter.

And as for Apple? The HomePod starts at an eye-watering £319. It’s not really playing the price-cut game.

Winner: Amazon Echo

Google Home vs Amazon Echo vs Apple HomePod: Verdict

So, on overall scores, it’s 3-2-1 – but this is an extremely close call, and my advice, therefore, hinges on a couple of things.

1) If you want the cheapest experience, the Echo Dot is the way to go

Assuming you have a speaker to connect it to (Bluetooth or wired), it’s a no-brainer way of tasting the future. You might think the Google Home Mini is a good answer here: it isn’t. It has no 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning you need to have a Chromecast Audio connected to play music off another speaker.

2) If you’re tied into Google services – and especially if you use Chromecast – then Google Home is the superior product

Gun to my head, if I were buying one today, I’d pick Google Home – and I say that as a household that actually went out and bought an Echo and Echo Dot (the Home is sadly loaned for the purpose of this comparison). But the Amazon Echo is nonetheless a great device that is getting better all the time, and there really is very little between them as things stand.

3) If you care about sound quality above all else, the HomePod is where it’s at

Neither Google nor Amazon amazing sound quality. The HomePod does.

It’s probably worth hanging on to see where the market goes from here, but for now it’s all about the HomePod. Or connect an Echo Dot to your own brilliant setup, of course.

Google Home vs Amazon Echo vs Apple HomePod: Upcoming rivals

Of course, there are rivals from in Amazon’s own family. Not only has Amazon made the Alexa software available to third parties, meaning that the next Alexa-enabled speaker on the market may not be sold by Amazon.

As if that wasn’t enough, Harman Kardon will be throwing their hat into the ring soon with a speaker powered by Microsoft’s Cortana. We don’t know much about it yet – there’s no firm price, and no release date, though we’d expect it to be with us before the year is out. Oh, and the rumour is that Samsung will be getting in on the act with a Bixby speaker soon too – but consider the company a dark horse in this race, given Bixby’s voice commands still aren’t enabled on Samsung Galaxy S8 handsets by default.

One thing is clear though: Amazon is clearly on to something with the smart speaker/home assistant, and as long as Echos continue to sell well, rivals won’t be hard to come by. Both the Echo and Google Home make good purchases for the moment, but it won’t be long before the market has plenty more options to choose from. Time will tell as to whether being first to market makes their respective positions insurmountable.