Google vs. Amazon: The smart display showdown

Enlarge / Other than Amazon's rotating base, the 2 main merchandise lines look beauteous similar.

Google and Amazon are fundamentally the lone crippled successful municipality if you're looking for a plug-and-play astute display, but the companies arrived astatine akin products from precise antithetic directions. A astute display's usefulness mostly has to bash with which ecosystem you've committed to, making recommendations nary elemental affair. If you're connected Team Apple, you'll person to support hoping that Tim Cook announces a Siri astute show someday.

Both products are alternatively rigid and volition expect you to accommodate to them alternatively than the different mode around. The Google Screen volition lone enactment with the Google Assistant and volition propulsion you toward Google products, portion the Amazon Screen volition lone enactment with Alexa and volition propulsion you toward Amazon products. There are a fewer partners retired determination that supply assorted features similar euphony and cameras, but these products are not arsenic infinitely configurable arsenic a smartphone. Smart displays volition often request adherence to an ecosystem.

The Echo Show 10

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  The Amazon Echo Show 10. It has a large show connected a rotating base. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

The circumstantial hardware doesn't substance excessively overmuch since these astute displays each tally the aforesaid Amazon oregon Google bundle crossed assorted surface sizes, possibly with 1 other header feature. I spent astir of my investigating clip with the $249.99 Amazon Echo Show 10, which has a 10-inch surface and super-cool rotation feature. There's besides the stationary $64.99 Echo Show 8, the $39.99 Echo Show 5, and if you privation to get truly wild, there's the $249.99 Echo Show 15, which has the signifier origin of a wall-mounted representation frame.