Appliances & Connected Home

[bobberuchi]

My wife was visiting my brother in law and was amazed by his Alexa set up.

She has been hinting that possibly I should do something similar.

Now the difficult question to get a good answer from is which one is better. Difficult I say because you cannot really give validated answer unless you have owned them all.

So I would like to ask about your experiences regarding set up, cost and functionality of what you may own.

Mostly right now I am looking to

Apple HomeKit

Amazon Echo

and 

Google Home

I do see that BB carries a number of devices that are cross platform compatible such as the Philips Hue etc..

[Alexandra-BBY Retired: Social Media Specialist]

Hey bobberuchi,

I only have experience with the Amazon Echo, but I absolutely love it. It's extremely easy to set up, and it's nice to use when you don't have a free hand for whatever reason. I have to admit though, the Apple HomePod (I think this is what you were talking about) looks cool too. The way it can analyze the acoustics of the room it's in is pretty high tech!

That said, I don't think I could ever get a Google Home. This is only because it looks like an air freshener to me (I don't know why either - don't question my weirdness, just accept it). 

I hope this helps,

[bobberuchi]

HomePod I believe is part of HomeKit.  HomePod I think is just the speaker and receiving unit.  I used terms incorrectly I think.  

Amazon Echo is part of Amazon Home

Amazon Home is actually a larger collection of 

My error.

I think what I would like to do is to physically compare the sound quality of the two systems in person.

Does Amazon work in such a way that I can have the speaker units around the house and they all work together?

I think at Christmas time it would be great to have 3 or 4 speakers around the house all streaming music from my Amazon Prime premade music play lists

[Alexandra-BBY Retired: Social Media Specialist]

Hey bobberuchi,

Unfortunately, you cannot connect multiple Alexa devices to each other and play the same requested audio at the same time. That would be a cool feature though!

I've read some articles from sites theorizing about the possibility of Amazon adding some sort of Synchronized Audio feature in future. I'm not see anything concrete about it though, so don't quote me on that. 

Cheers,

[bobberuchi]

Can other blu tooth speaker connect to it?

[bobberuchi]

From what I have seen the Google Home (air freshener) can utilize multiple speakers and hubs

Apparently if you have something called Harmony you can use it to start your AV system and have Roku que up a show.

[Alexandra-BBY Retired: Social Media Specialist · Accepted solution]

Hi again, bobberuchi,

Yep! The Amazon Echo can connect to existing speakers through Bluetooth. If you do want to do that though, you could just purchase the Echo Dot. It's basically the same thing as the standard Echo, except it doesn't have the huge speaker, and it's cheaper.

And yes - the air fresh... Google Home can connect to an existing Harmony (Logitech) product. However, if that's something you ultimately want to do, just know that the Echo can do that as well.

Be sure to check your private messages to see the support articles I'll be sending you in a few minutes. They give detailed instructions on how to do everything you just mentioned.

Sincerely,

[bobberuchi]

Thanks a lot for your input. 

I think with the advent of the new Amazon Echo show that is coming out that I am going to go forward with the Amazon Alexa. However, I believe you can change the keyword to Echo which I will have to do as we have a child in our house named Alexis and I have read stories about that. 

Amazon Echo Show

[feng_shue]

Han

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@bobberuchi wrote:

My wife was visiting my brother in law and was amazed by his Alexa set up.

She has been hinting that possibly I should do something similar.

Now the difficult question to get a good answer from is which one is better. Difficult I say because you cannot really give validated answer unless you have owned them all.

So I would like to ask about your experiences regarding set up, cost and functionality of what you may own.

Mostly right now I am looking to

Apple HomeKit

Amazon Echo

and 

Google Home

I do see that BB carries a number of devices that are cross platform compatible such as the Philips Hue etc..

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Hands down, the best right now would be the Lenovo Smart Display. The built in screen just adds so much more feature to the assistant than ever before. And if you see the small price difference, and the giftcard/discounts you get when you purchase it from bestbuy, it's just like a free screen. Video calls, you can actually see your shopping list, a lot more. And they're currently working on updates for the OS.