Google Home

A little over a year ago, Amazon launched Echo, an always-connected speaker/hub that allowed owners to receive answers to questions, hear the news, get the weather, and much more without pressing a button. Now, Google has released a competitor: Home. Google Home is a similar always-listening speaker that can respond to your questions, fire up some music, control certain home devices, and plenty more whenever you ask it to. Unlike the Echo, however, Home can work with one of Google’s most popular devices, the Chromecast, to allow you to stream YouTube videos and shows to the TV you have your Chromecast dongle plugged into, and it can work with other Home units and Google Cast devices. Google has worked to make Home’s audio responses short and sweet, while still leveraging Google’s power, so you aren’t listening to an entire Wikipedia entry after you ask a question. It launches later this year and price is yet to be announced.