Loving your new Google Home Mini? Hating its tinny sound and lack of auxiliary output options? Well Google appears to have heard your lo-fi cries of anguish, and responded by adding a way to control your third-party Bluetooth speakers using your Google Home device. Nice work! It only took a whole year.
Devices like the Google Home are billed as AI-powered assistants that can help make your life easier, but that doesn’t mean Google’s intentions are entirely altruistic. That little speaker sitting in the corner is listening to you, and sending at least some of that data back to Google, which is now using that info to…
Your smart speaker is getting smarter—and part of that involves taking over what’s on the big TV screen sat in the corner of your living room. You can buy Google Homes and Amazon Echos with screens built-in, but here’s how to use them with a separate display, whether you want to watch movies or see the weather…
Just a couple days before the world’s biggest smartphone convention kicks off in Barcelona, Google is rolling out updates for a number of its most interesting Android features.
It seems like every new wireless speaker on the market comes with a voice assistant now. Since 2014, when Amazon announced the Echo, the idea of a smart speaker has taken the gadget world by storm. Apple has finally thrown its hat into the ring with the release of the HomePod, leaving us to wonder which smart speaker…
This winter I bought three Google Home Minis—two for me, and one for my lovely parents.
The weird thing about picking up the Google Home Max is the weight. It’s only 11 pounds, but it feels heavy, the way speakers used to feel. So I feel like I smirked when I plugged it in, thinking, “This thing’s gonna be loud.” At top volume, the Google Home Max did not blow me away. I could, however, have a…
Yesterday, a report from Bloomberg came out saying that Samsung will launch a Bixby-powered smart speaker sometime in the first half of 2018. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone since DJ Koh already told CNBC back in August that the company was indeed trying to put its digital assistant, which first…
This February Google finally brought the Google Assistant from the Pixel and Google Home to other Android devices, but they were newer products like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and HTC 10. Older phone owners were stuck with upgrading or going Assistant-less. That changes now, the company announced on Wednesday that Google…
Thanks in large part to the low-cost Echo Dot, Amazon grabbed an early lead in the smart speaker space. But this fall Google hit back hard with the Home Mini, which has become the best cheap smart speaker to buy for most people. Unfortunately, shortly after its launch, a bug affecting the top touch controls in some…
If your smart home gadget can’t be controlled with a voice command, is it really smart at all?
Despite all the time and energy companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and others have spent stressing the importance of AI, actual progress doesn’t always feel that swift. That’s because after about a year on the market, the Google Home has just gotten the ability to do two things at once.
Even with all the screen issues, weird buzzing noises, and unbalanced speaker performance on Google’s Pixel 2, there’s an even bigger issue that’s been bugging me. The problem isn’t restricted to just that single device—and in fact, it actually crept up about six months ago when Samsung released the Galaxy S8.
Google Assistant is keen on taking as big a role in your life as possible, and to that end Google keeps pouring new features into the app, whether it’s on your phone, your dinky smart speaker, your Pixelbook, or your Nvidia Shield. Here are 7 capabilities that the Assistant has been given that you might not have made…
For six glorious months a few years ago C-3PO was the voice of Waze on my phone. That December I drove from California to North Carolina, and having my favorite droid give me directions made the whole experience a lot more pleasant. I love it when you can change the voice of digital assistants you deal with daily.…
Google announced a pair of new smart home speakers on Wednesday in an effort to compete with devices from Amazon and Apple. The search giant now offers a pint-sized Google Home Mini for $49 and a powerful Google Home Max for $399, along with its original $129 Google Home.
Google just announced a lovely hockey puck of a gadget called the Google Home Mini. As the name implies, the device does everything a Google Home does in a much smaller package. It’s also cheap!
Even though it feels like we’re still processing all of Apple’s latest devices and announcements, it’s time to switch gears and prepare for what’s coming on the other side of of the smartphone divide. That’s because Google’s big fall event is less than a week a way, and it’s going to have important news for anyone who…
Even though Nvidia’s Shield TV has been out for a while, in many ways, it’s Android’s answer to the recently revamped Apple TV 4K. Like the $179 Apple TV, the $200 Shield TV can stream media in 4K and HDR, in addition to having built-in Chromecast support, access to all your regular Android apps, and the ability to…
You know that thing you do where you ask your partner/friend/family member to remind you to do something later? Yeah, well now Google Home can actually do that, and unlike that person you always ask, it won’t forget. This week, Google Home is rolling out an update that will finally enable voice-activated reminders for…
