I'm a Google Home owner, so perhaps it's a case where the grass is always greener :-)
On the other hand, on Alexa I can't say "play fleetwood mac in the living room" (via chromecast). That single feature is nearly enough to send me to Google Home, except for the reasons I mentioned above...but I feel hesitant to stick with Alexa when I know the only reasons it can't do what I want are stupid.
But Alexa does seems to have a head-start with third-party integration and services. So for now I own one of each. I'm hoping that maybe both of them will reach parity at some point and I can finally settle on one of them.
But the Google Home ecosystem isn't so great yet, so I don't want to jump into that basket.
I've been messing with some of the open source alternatives (+Raspberry Pi), and they're all pretty rough. I plan to spend some time to put together something easier to use, but it's a tall order.
Alexa, Siri, Google Home, Cortana.. they could all use the same standards to become interoperable.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/19/leak-details-google-home...
Get me voice recognition that actually understands language and can be corrected to learn what I want in even the most basic ways and I might change my mind. Adding cameras and screens only makes a creepy device creepier. I don't trust a company that sells me things designed primarily as vectors to sell me more things.
I can ask the Google Assistant to call anyone in my contacts and it happens, if I ask for a map to their house it fails horribly.
> Call anyone hands-free, or make video calls to family and friends with an Echo Spot, Echo Show, or the Alexa App. Instantly connect to other Echo devices around your home.
1) These look like (horrible) renders. Do they not have working ones to show before announcing?
2) None of the photos show a power cord, are these battery powered or just trying to make them look "sexier" than they are?
(In practice, the power cord would run down the back-side of a bedside table.)
Ultimately, I'm not too interested in using voice interfaces as they currently are. I'm not trying to knock the product, I feel the same about Siri and Google's assistant. Lots of improvements have been made, but its just not for me yet.
At least it makes a good bluetooth receiver for my car, though it does whine to me about not having an internet connection at the beginning of every drive.
These actually fill my needs better, since I don't need the fancy speakers and these look way slicker. The Echo Show is amazingly ugly. And this is a full $100 cheaper.
