Experts Break Down The Difference Between Google Home and Amazon Echo

"Right now, you definitely don't need one," said David Pierce, a senior writer at Wired who has reviewed both the Google Home Mini and Amazon Echo Show. "But you should get one! Once you get used to all the small things they can do, like play music or tell you the weather or convert tablespoons to cups while you're mid-recipe, it's hard to go back ... They're playthings. And truly, neither Amazon nor Google's gadget is "better," according to our experts, though one might be a better fit for a given user. "Both speakers perform different tasks really well and really poorly," said Alex Hernandez, editor-in-chief of tech site Techaeris. "It will come down to what you want to do with your smart speaker." The Echo "can control a wider range of smart home devices" than Google Home, said Alex Cranz, senior reviews editor at Gizmodo. That is, of course, if you have smart home devices to control. Our experts agree that Google Home's main draw is its ability to answer complex questions like "What were last week's lottery numbers?" Google Home is "supremely smart thanks to Google's dominance in search," said Nick Pino, a senior editor at TechRadar. "It can tell you things like how much airplane tickets cost, or when movies, games or music originally came out ... Alexa pretty frequently doesn't know how to answer your questions." Plus, they say Google Home is better at understanding your voice. With Echo, "you have to be very specific in how you word your requests, and they can often come out sounding like word salad.