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Google Home review: useful cache of personal info is where the heart is

Peter Wells

Google's latest gadget is an always on, always listening little speaker called Home. It's a cute design, a friendly little blob of a thing that looks like a half finished cartoon character. It's also not available in Australia, if you want one you'll need to have one shipped to you from the US.

Setting up the Home is simple. In less than a minute I'd connected it to my phone, then onto the Wi-Fi. Being a US-only product, you need to change the language settings on your phone to English (US) for the app to work properly, but thankfully Home understood me just fine, I didn't need to speak with an American accent.

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Google unveils Google Home

New individually responsive voice-interactive features and products are unveiled by Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

At its simplest, the Home is a good little Wi-Fi speaker you can 'cast' to, flinging podcasts and music from your phone. And it's fantastic for this purpose. The speaker sounds great and is surprisingly loud. Home can also play directly from Google Music, Spotify and Pandora, so you don't need your phone nearby. Just ask it to "play Beyonce" and Queen B will play.

Perhaps as a bonus of not being released officially in Australia, Home has access to podcasts, which haven't come to Google Music's service here. So while you can't manage podcasts or subscriptions on the device, you can still say "Ok Google, play the latest Planet Money" and it'll know what you mean and begin the episode. This doesn't work with all podcasts, just those chosen to be in the US Google Play store.

Beyond that, the Home has Google's Assistant built in — which knows as much or as little about you as you let Google know. I use Google services for just about everything, so there's nothing the company doesn't know. So when I ask "Ok Google, what do I have on today?" Home was able to read back my calendar appointments, then tell me how long it would take to drive to work.

Right now the Home is limited to just one Google account, so a family can't really expect to share a device. That seems odd for a device designed to live in shared spaces like your living room or kitchen. Considering Google Now on a phone can learn your voice, I was hoping Home would be able to tell the difference between my voice and my wife's, and automatically switch between our accounts.

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I originally had our Home set up beside the TV in our living room, to take advantage of using it to voice control our Chromecast. It worked better than expected. "Ok Google, play Zootopia on the TV" was all I needed to switch the TV to the correct HDMI, find Zootopia in Netflix, and start playing.

As cool as that was, I eventually moved the Home into the kitchen, where it made more sense as a hands-free timer and podcast player when I'm cooking or doing the dishes. It's also a more natural spot to add items to a shopping list, another nifty trick. Perhaps I need a second Home?

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My only other annoyance is "Ok Google" is a terribly clumsy expression to say. Thankfully a friend told me "Hey Google" works just as well. So that's how I speak to it now. I'd prefer full customisation of that trigger word though, so I can bark "Computer! Tea, Earl Grey. Hot."

And you don't need to speak that loud. I spoke in a whisper to see if Home's microphones would be able to hear me. And they did, from the other side of the room. Impressive.

Home can also tell you the weather, and read from selected news services. The services are limited now to a handful of US providers and the BBC. Its biggest competitor is Amazon's Echo, also not available here. Amazon seems to have the lead on Google in terms of third party integration, but I'd love to see this opened up to ever more services. I'd prefer to keep my shopping list in Wunderlist, not Google Keep. And I prefer my news bulletins from ABC Radio, not Fox.

The Home has been a surprisingly fun little addition to my home. It's one of most interesting new gadgets I've played with this year, and while it can't do a lot right now, it's full of potential.