Smart Homes: Amazon Vs Google

You can put together a basic system using Amazon Echo or Google Home for a few hundred dollars.

- Kaitlin Pitsker

For decades, we’ve imagined being served by a robot butler (or a robot housekeeper, à la Rosie in The Jetsons) and owning smart appliances, such as a fridge that ordered a carton of milk when you ran low. Now, Amazon Echo and Google Home as well as an assortment of other systems you can control with your smartphone are making some of those futuristic scenarios a reality. You won’t have Rosie serving you a home-cooked meal anytime soon, but a rapidly expanding list of smart-home devices are available, with more on the way.

Because their systems are inexpensive and easy to use, Amazon, Google (and, soon, Apple and Facebook; see the box on the facing page) are quickly taking over the smart home market. The systems are built around a voice-activated smart speaker connected to your home WiFi. Just say “Alexa” or “OK, Google” and the system springs into action. As with Siri or Google Assistant on your smartphone, the speakers connect to the internet to, among other things, check traffic or the weather, read news headlines, add appointments to your calendar or items to your shopping list, and look up basic information. But the technology is hands-free: You don’t have to stop what you’re doing to fiddle with your phone.

What makes these smart speakers even more powerful is their ability to connect with and control other smart home devices—allowing you to create a network that responds to your spoken commands. You can create a basic smart-home network for less than $500 (to see some options, see page 69). With it, you will be able to turn off the lights after you’ve climbed under the covers at night, turn up the heat and turn on the coffeemaker before you get out of bed, and complete any number of other tasks while you’re at work during the day.

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