Google Home Reviews

Update- Months later, some of the issues below have been slowly resolved over time through multiple releases. However, now with the latest release, I cannot access Network Settings and cannot Prioritize devices on the network. Two critical functions that appear to have just stopped working! A one star rating at this point still seems generous. There’s been no overall improvement in the last year since Google forced its users to migrate to this junky app! I recommend looking elsewhere for WIFI devices and apps.
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Google wifi app is much better...provides more detail related to your setup and straightforward functionality. For example, we have more than 30 devices connected in our home and 4 APs. In the Google Home app, I can’t determine what AP each device is connected to. GoogleHome just says Google wifi point. The old Google Wifi app used to show the specific AP, by name, the device is connected to. Made managing and troubleshooting devices and APs much easier. BEWARE, once you upgrade to the Home app, the data in the old WIFi app is overwritten with useless data from the Home app. You cannot revert back to using just the Wifi app. There are several other “features” either missing or poorly designed in the Home app. Don’t switch until Google improves the usability of the Home app. This may be the reason I switch to another product!

I am impressed with the google home app running on IOS devices.. Yes It would be best to purchase same vender devices if possible.. Step 1 load the specific app set ( sunCo lights+ewelink) in my devices choices.. Set up your devices first from manufacturing company.. After your devices are set up GOTO google[+] add devices Next find your devices in list of manufacturers Then press appropriate links..After all your devices of choice have been linked You may now delete manufacturers install/ set up applications.. The reason you want to delete manufacturers application.. 1 save on memory.. 2 Less confusions navigation of multiple applications.. At the moment as far as can tell horizontal format for devices is available.. A grid option format for devices buttons would be a improvement ....

Update.. for grid options..
To group or room up your devices..
Create a label for your devices.. Google home will automatically arrange devices with numbers first then letters. So to arrange your devices priority .. 1 living room, 2 kitchen and 3 Bathrooms. Labeling with out a number will be arranged to bathroom, kitchen, living room..

Manually the switches work ok, connecting to the TV will only work some times. Chrome cast is a pain. I did a lot of work and is not paying off. I ask for a specific song and it only works on a single speaker, if I am using a group of speakers, google plays what ever it wants. I got three chrome cast and they were fine at first but after a few weeks voice commands to chrome cast stoped working on all three. Google says it doesn’t recognize that device, I reset to factory, start all over and nothing. I am getting board of this I am thinking of going back to apple TV. What a waste of money. I have 5 nest cams and they connect and disconnect constantly, that problem came after google took over. I am angry about that security problem. I tried everything to have the system recognize only my voice so people couldn’t open my garage or my front door, that does not work. I even had a google tech help me set that up, thats not safe, anyone who knows what I named the door can simply ask google loudly through my glass window or glass door and it opens anything. Google is not safe . I regret all the money spent on this worthless system.

GoogleHome is NOT user friendly. the help center is a joke. the talk help is an even bigger joke. if you click on some of the default question you “could” ask, some answer will be “i don’t understand”. how don’t you understand your own question. link devices is impossible to figure out. the help center just says to open setting. that’s all it ever says “open google home app and go to setting”. when setting doesn’t even let you do anything. the instructions for next step are super unclear. my google home wasn’t connected to wifi. google said to change it on GoogleHome . GoogleHome said to make sure in i’m on the same wifi. how can i be on the same wifi as my google home, if my google home isn’t connecting to wifi. then come to find out they meant go to the seething on your phone and change the wifi. so i did. change to wifi to my google home wifi (which isn’t really a wifi but i guess that’s how to access things??? idk). when i switches over now GoogleHome doesn’t work because it isn’t a real wifi connection. so i’m conclusion: i have a google speaker that can’t access wifi. a google home app that can’t access the speaker to change the wifi because it can’t connect to wifi. and when i try to “connect to the same wifi as the speaker” i can’t access GoogleHome . help center is a joke. GoogleHome is unintuitive. wouldn’t buy it for my enemy.

I was just strongly encouraged to migrate from the Nest app to Google Home and while everything appears to work, the experience is a huge downgrade. The Nest app had a flow of devices with relevant content. For each thermostat, it showed the settings and current temp. I only had to click through to the device of I wanted to make changes. In Google, I have to select the category thermostats and then an individual device before I see any information. That's two additional clicks pet device instead of just being able to see it all at once. In Nest, I could invite anyone to join the home by entering their email address. It would send them an email invite with a link that would walk them through setting up their account. In Google, it simple tells me I can only add people with a Google account. I have to tell them to go setup an account on their own and then add them later. That is not a friendly experience. I can only see one camera at a time. In Nest, I could see them on a single page and then choose one to get a full page view. And finally, the color scheme is much more stark and less pleasing. GoogleHome is in every way worse than what I had with Nest. It works. But from a user experience standpoint, it is a huge disappointment.

GoogleHome is terrible. I have been a Nest customer for years. Forcing migration to GoogleHome is fine but the layout is absolutely awful. Forcing customers with older products into new products because of the lack in features from the old app to this one is seriously enough to make me want to invest in something else! I own a oldschool dropcam, a new battery cam, doorbell, thermostat, and thermostat sensor. I also subscribe to membership monthly for video history. I’m telling you I’m really disappointed in GoogleHome. You can’t view all cameras in one feed (have to click on one by one individually), you can’t access settings for doorbell (ie. bandwidth preference, alerts, etc), no ability to customize thermostat schedule, and on the old app once you click on the camera from the live feed (OF ALL CAMERAS AT ONCE), it displays screenshots of every motion/sound alert so you can easily scroll through the “events” for the day. If you have an old camera, you won’t be able to see history without clicking on a ton of buttons. Yet, I purchase the new battery cam and I CAN view history easily with a timeline feed?? I could go on about my disappointment in Google for the lack of care in GoogleHome compared to the old.

As with just about all of my nest products I’m mortified at how horrible GoogleHome performs. I’m so invested with nest at this point I feel stuck after buying a massive bundle package a year or so ago. They’re app crashes constantly and takes forever to load anything. They’re notifications would rather focus on shadows and bugs then the mail man or cars in my driveway. Their previews never load and instead I get a blank screen. While using GoogleHome or in between opening GoogleHome I am constantly logged out as is my wife on her phone. The quality of my WiFi doesn’t seem to matter but cameras are co stay my offline. The smoke detectors are constantly giving false smoke detections giving me a heart attack. They’re support is horrible and says use the google home app. Well that apps worse as you can’t open GoogleHome and see your cameras. You have to click on every camera to see it and it loads just as slowly and horribly as the nest app. I’m about to just throw it all in the trash and drop a bunch of money on a better product. You’d think a massive company like google would be on top of their tech and have something as sought after as this preforming like the public would expect it to do. So yourself a favor and look into other security options.

The apps is on to something good but still has major connection and WiFi problems. I have kids and have them on a usage schedule through the Google Home app. I’m also using the google WiFi router as well. I constantly have issues where the WiFi will stop working for one of the computers or other device. The “pause” or “not pause” option (which is confusing anyways) always gets stuck or shows “paused” when it’s not or vice versa. This wouldn’t be a big deal if Covid didn’t have my kids schooling from home. I’ve stayed on top of updating GoogleHome but I still have problems. Another issue I have is connecting to 3rd party smart media. The interface is always confusing with too many options and flowcharts. Make it simple guys. I went to school for computer information systems and I get stuck sometimes, think about all those elderly folks, they probably have to hire someone to set up google products. Google has never been like Apple where it’s user interface is super easy to adapt to. The programmers need a separate user interface team for just about all of their software. You guys are good but you need some big changes.

TLDR[[ things that could be improved (simplier/intuitive menu, reorder/hide roommates devices that i don't want/need to see, so the ones i actually use aren't at the bottom) ]]

this review started because i'm having to keep factory resetting my smart speaker so it shows up in my new office and not my bedroom at my old house)
i've used GoogleHome with google products (speakers, mesh networks, chromecast, etc) for over a year now. I spend more time googling how to move devices/troubleshoot connection problems, etc than i would like. this is especially true since i moved into a new home with other users who have their own devices. i'm constantly paranoid about turning on my roommates lights off or on when they're sleeping because i can't hide their devices or even reorder them so they're bot at the top. the menu options are spread too thin, across too much menu. it's hard to find the function that i want, but you cam only do one or two things for a device in a certain menu. just put it all in one with a '...' for the less commonly needed functions. 😒😤

In a nutshell, not good, but then again it was released just yesterday. Most of the negative is with the video history and the lack of options to delete. If you look at something that was detected, there’s no way to delete that particular video from the screen where you watch it. The ONLY way to delete videos at this time is to delete all of them at one time, you cannot delete single videos. With Ring, and I have an app version that’s working fairly well and you can at least select which ones to delete. Also with Ring you could get a preview upon opening GoogleHome . With the new Nest doorbell, it just says the camera is “Idle” and you have to go to live view to see what is currently happening. So, Nest doorbell developers, this system needs some work. Also, the doorbell has a built in battery, so what happens in about 2-3 years when the battery gives out, can the battery be replaced or would I need to buy a new $180 doorbell ???
UPDATE 9/2/21: Returning the Nest doorbell battery. Tech support is worthless, the interaction with Google Home is terrible. and the lack of a replaceable battery just caps it off. Too bad, I expected better.

Home mostly works but it still has lots of bugs. It stops playing streams at least once or twice a day. It looses connection to the internet. When I place a phone call, it thinks it is the first time I have used it, and reads me a boring script. It is difficult to manage notifications. A Reminder is easy to miss because it does not include an alarm sound. Although Google has access to my every word, they never seem to push software updates. It drives me crazy that it is not user configurable. If you speak to it it sometimes doesn’t respond, if you yell at it, two speakers respond. If you start a stream on one speaker, there is no way to add a new speaker when you move to a new room. There is no way to group lights and or speaker into a scene, So you have to turn them on one at a time or turn on all lights in a room. There are still limits to wireless switch and bulb configurations on the market. This is not Google’s fault but some smart rocker switches are incompatible with standard cover plates. There is no two gang switch yet. All wireless outlet units stick out of the wall and make the plug hit furniture, etc.

I have a Google Chromecast and Google Nest Mini, latest generation. Even though my Apple devices can readily find and pair with this hardware via BT and WiFi, the Google Home App consistently has trouble finding and pairing. There is no useful error message; Google Home simply displays an irritating graphic of falling shapes and suggests to “try resetting”. Useless!

Further, Google Home has very limited controls. I can select devices and turn them on and off. That’s it. To cast, I must do this from individual apps. There is no reasonable way to use Google Home to adjust settings on the devices or help them to work together. Yes, I created “Rooms” and “Groups”, but these structures do not enable the most basic of features such as syncing audio/video from Google Chromecast across multiple devices (TVs, Speakers). And heaven forbid I want to Cast something from Chromecast directly to the Nest speaker while doing something independently with my phone: the Google Home app prevents this from happening by stopping the active cast from the Chrome device. Why the heck would you have this? At least add a toggle switch to selectively enable this feature.

First, let me say my experience on the phone with customer service (Michael) was outstanding. He helped me fix the original issue. I had every item in our home set up, but I was unable to set up the Living Room. After hours of failed attempts, I got in contact with support. Michael walked me through a few different troubleshooting ideas to no avail. When he realized I was using the iPhone XR, he told me that was the issue. I had to get my son’s iPhone 6 to complete the set up. Great. Problem solved. An hour and a half later, all of the items in our household crashed. I attempted to walk through the steps Michael had provided. It all seemed fine, until it came to the last step (connecting to Wi-Fi), at which point, the TV showed my the screen with the 4 digit code...again. I went in circles for 2 more hours. I requested replacement Chromecast devices and Michael said he would definitely pass the word up. For everything in our house to crash and not reboot, I am guessing it has something to do with the update. After all, the last question it asked before I had to start over was, “Set up some smart lights”, which is actually more of a command than a question.

Please please please re-integrate the shopping list feature into the Home app! Aside from playing music, adding items to the shopping list—primarily groceries as we run out of them—is our primary use for our Google Home.

While it was a bit buried in the settings, being able to manage our shopping list from our central home app really removed stress from our daily routines. The list was always a little tricky to use and could definitely still use some UX love, but attempting to use it in the Shopping app is awful. I have to re-selected the shopping list every time I navigate to a browser to reference the recipes informing my list. It’s way too easy to delete an item when I’m trying to move it. The experience is so bad I’ve found myself using it less.

Planning our grocery runs is a definitely a core home activity. Please bring it back to the Home app!

I have 2 3 node google matrix router sets. One in my home one in my vacation house. Went to make a change in router setup but the old command to setup router now only provides info and I have to go to google home to make router changes. Ok I hit the migrate button and I get a list of devices that does not include any google matrix routers. Now I would think that since the command I was using knows what devices I own it would bring up the correct devices in google home. Or at the very least document what I would need to do to set up google home. I thought I bought a google product but this crap is as bad as a Microsoft solution. Now I have 500 dollars of routers that will need to be replaced.
This is a disgrace. And not the quality of a software solution I would expect for spending over 500 dollars for routers.

Compared to Alexa:
(1) home hub doesn’t show the time at night (the “ambient light sensor” turns the screen 100% black) (2) can’t call a specific room (3) can’t play a song without blabbering for a minute about every artist and service involved (4) can’t set family reminders that go off for everyone (5) the hub devices can’t hear anyone speak well (6) google can’t play popular songs like the Lion King (featured in their own commercials) without manual intervention otherwise they play knockoffs (7) will only play white noise for an hour unless specified (8) don’t have a quiet mode so if you ask something at night have to listen to it scream across your house nonsense like “this is what white noise sounds like” (9) assistant only sometimes connects to the devices and when it does it can’t even perform the same tasks (eg play white noise) (10) Hub doesn’t display the time if the hub is doing anything besides nothing which makes it a terrible bedside device -even white noise turns off the clock which is stupid by every measure

I bought the Google Home for a convenient and fun way to stay connected and try something new. Only after using it for two days did it dawn on me that everything my 5 year old was saying to it was being recorded and stored on Google servers. He loved it. “Hi Google” could have gone on for hours if I let it. I work in software development and decided to look further into where things stand with smart speakers and Child Online Privacy and Protection - COPPA (including the collection of children’s personal information, audio, video and images). Bottom line - I couldn’t find anything addressing it. Some concerns have been raised that might lead to legal action at some point, I also saw articles alluding to future patents that could make the listening tech even more invasive. Imagine ads targeting your kids based on conversations you’ve had with them at dinner. These have somehow been sold into millions of homes with a loophole. For now I decided retire the Google Home. I deleted the multiple voice recordings of my son that had been stored via the Google Home app and can only hope that they are permanently gone from Google servers too.

So the integration with Nest is horrible. The feature to set up sound detection for Nest Aware worked ok, but now that option is missing under settings. I wasted 2.5 hours with chat support, passed between 6 people . They had me try all sorts of things that could not have anything to do with GoogleHome not having the option. I asked to be escalated to a supervisor and always got the run around that I just needed to try a few things more first. I asked for the case to be escalated at least 10 times. When “Wendy” asked me to go borrow a phone from someone and test on it, I lost it . When she asked me to send a screenshot of my account info, which has personal identifying information, I finally ended the chat. If you are not in the Google echo system and expect their Nest products to work with their Google Home products, run away quick. If you expect any sort of functional support for their products, run away quick. I would strongly suggest avoiding Google for your smart home solution. They are definitely a monopoly who could care less about their customers.

At first Google home was amazing. It was reliable and my music subscription would always work.

However, a few months ago something happened. I’m not sure if it was a new update or the introduction of an additional google home, but everything started failing.

At first it started with my music subscription. On occasion it would disconnect and I would either get a notification that too many people are in the account or the music would just stop without explanation.

The issues progressed to connectivity. Now my app was not able to discover one of my two google homes. The device was constantly “out of range” or “not on the same network” but in reality it was just the apps inability to establish connection.

I went through the motions of resetting my network, resetting my devices and even starting fresh and deleting my google home and recreating it. Nothing worked.

Creating a new home in GoogleHome made thins particularly bad because now GoogleHome doesn’t discover any of my google home devices and my music accounts will no longer sync.

The device have turned into nothing more than glorified Bluetooth speakers and that only when the Bluetooth function decides to work.

All in all this started off great and I was super excited about being able to create a mesh network of speakers in my home. However once I started experiencing issues there had not been a solution and the troubleshooting attempted have all been extremely time consuming.

Pros: Improved Home app certainly helps a lot! Especially for a Deaf person like myself. I bought the Google Home Hub due to its display to show information I need when I ask, freeing me from looking at the phone’s screen frequently. I use my phone to speak the commands to Google Home Hub, and it responds well from commands or answering my questions with information on display, certainly a wonderful feature!

Cons: sometimes, when I ask a question, it doesn’t show the information, would end up speaking the information, so I had to modify the questions to make the Hub show the information, if it still fails, I use Google Assistant on my phone as an alternative. It can be frustrating sometimes!

Otherwise, it’s huge step for Google to make their products as much as friendly for everyone. Keep it up Google! 👏👏

The first iteration of the Google Home app was fine for launch, but there are certain features and refinements that were missing, then they made it a little convoluted by switching you back and forth between Home and Assistant for some reason, but this new version is exactly what I'd expect from Google. The UI/UX is phenomenal and the features you actually expect are right at your fingertips when you open GoogleHome , such as the ability to see every device and manage their basic operations with one click and not having to dig through various apps to target such devices manually. The addition of pairing a Bluetooth speaker has been long awaited but also the ability to make a speaker group and simultaneously play music through all of them is another feature I had been waiting for as someone who has speakers throughout the house.

Google, you truly nailed it with this update and I really hope the majority of the updates are minor fixes and routine maintenance, because as it stands, GoogleHome feels polished and feature rich!

I honestly wasn't expecting much since I stayed at a home that had Alexa. I genuinely love the Google home so much. It's easy to maneuver and I like that it resumes from where you left off if you accidentally stop it.

As for improvements, I'd love more options for news (especially a astrology and astronomy and Broadway based one) and to be able to read the full description of each news option somehow. Perhaps a transcript of the news as well to read along. I'd like it if you could go through your past questions/requests to the Google home as well just so I don't have to repeat myself if it speaks too fast. For lingists I think it would be neat if you could do a bilingual option (I know you can do multiple languages but it wouldn't answer to me when i spoke English even though it was the primary language). It would be nice to practice other languages with the Home's help. Or an option to put topics you want to stay up-to-date on and it will Google search and read the newest articles.

I know what you’re thinking...😮omg . Same thing I thought when my buddy was doing some browsing(not your typical amateurish cpu skills here i mind you) & reading DEEP into Google’s policies, prefs, and settings and came across the audio stuff. It was frightening at first I’ll admit... Him having random conversations infront of the computer.. 100s even.

I jammed home, got on my pc(I use google everything, i think its the future whether we like it or not). Only to find out
Most of those settings on my pc had been turned off and nothing had been recorded. Its common sense pretty much to read the fine print... and as long as you do with google you're 👌... And i’ll even go one step further. Trust me on this one. They been “known in the past” to get their users backs, and maybe eveb on occasion “look the other way,” when meed be. So my suggestion.. Stick it out.

Google home mini has made my life better. Besides helping me with everything things I constantly find myself going back and saying “Hey google !” Needless to say this device saved my life . If you don’t understand or even care about technology. Then this product is NOT for you. Overprotective parents need to get over themselves and stop making everything a problem . We’re spied on each and every day.. by Google, Microsoft , Sony, etc everyday.. our internet providers are constantly watching us. If you don’t like devices and software that record you then DONT get this product. I don’t say or do anything that would get me in trouble so I have no worries. In the end wether you cut a device or service out to try and protect yourself or your family then you might as well live under a rock.. because your always being watched... Always

I have a Google Home Mini, Chromecast, & a Geeni/Merkury Innovations smart outlet. I use all three daily. I just have a few suggestions. 1) Night mode on Chromecast: Filters blue light when videos and other media are playing. In Ambient Mode, the screen turns black or dark gray [decided by the user] and displays the time. The feature could be scheduled like other Google Home nightmode-things. Would be really useful, since I use a Dynex TV in my room as my light source at night. It's also not HDMI-CEC compatible so I can't use Google Assistant to turn it on/off. 2) Action compatibility for IFTT: I know you can use Google Home as a trigger in IFTTT, but I haven't seen it as an action. Actions would include things like Broadcast, changing volume of Home devices, and controlling devices such as smart outlets, Chromecast-s, smart locks, and any other Home-compatible devices in your setup. That's all!

I have two home minis and a standard home. They work well for new tech. You must be very precise all the time to get what you want completed. Google makes it hard to access pandora playlists, and often assumes the playlist doesn’t exist redirecting you to google play. When using a Chromecast google will only use primary account not secondary for Netflix through voice commands even if you try to specify. The mobile app site reminds me of something blackberry would have made, in that the action windows use slide feature way too much. All in all love the system and can’t wait for improvements. Puts Alexa and Siri to shame. Would love voice choices in the future. Morgan Freeman? Danny DeVito? Liz Hurley? Judy Dench? Someone’s gotta be bored enough to sit through voice programming.

My husband and I have had our Chrome cast for a hot minute, and we absolutely love the fact since we don’t have a “smart” tv that now it feels as if we do have a “smart “tv with this awesome little device that is hooked up to our tv now....
Its extremely easy to use, especially if you do have kids, which we do, have a son who just moved out, but when he comes and visits us we can have FAMILY movie night and everyone can pick something on whatever app you have and play it from on of our Cell Phone’s!!
I’m just so happy that we invested in the Chromecast, because eventually we may just get rid of Direct, all together!! The Chromecast, is kinda like our 2nd kid that we never had, but now it’s apart of our family forever and brings us joy and happiness in everyone’s life, thus far!! Thanks!!!

My boyfriend set up Google Mini but not all the way I downloaded the Google home mini app and then I found out I had to download the Google assistant app and then I had to download the Google Drive app. so I had to have 3 apps on my phone to work the Google mini completely and then it was working fine until I want to make personal phone calls and I said hey Google call this person and it said cannot find contact in phone and I called Google and I was on the phone with them for 3 hours. I reset the Google me unplugged it and still didn’t work. so I am returning them. I think Echo Dot is a lot better then Google home mini. At least my boyfriend gets his money back. Don’t buy Google mini unless you want three apps on your phone. Also it came with no instructions on how to set it up.
you had to download google home app plus goal assistant plus Google Drive very disappointed it had 2 of them and they were on sale at the time.

This is the best product that Google has ever made the assistant is wonderful she is what a assistant should be unlike Siri Siri is not a actual assistant it was very easy to set up once you connect the speaker to your account and you set up your routine and everything else you really do not need to go into GoogleHome I do not understand what these people are complaining about in adding users it’s really simple most of these people are complaining for nothing why would google let Apple Music be on its product if you won’t to use Apple Music with a speaker by the HomePod it is really easy to set alarms in delete alarms it’s nice to know about your day when you wake up and get the news it is also nice and wonderful to walk into your home and ask it to do what you want perfect product good job Google

I have been a Google fan boy for as long as I can remember. I used it over Yahoo back when it was a thing, I got into the Gmail BETA through invitation, and so on. Google was definitely my choice with smart home tech, but now I finally have a grievance. GoogleHome continues to forget my routines. The devices apparently don’t recognize bulbs or routines, nor do they refer me by name anymore. Good morning is supposed to give me the time, weather, commuting information, and stuff on my calendar... but it just says hi here’s the time. Options disappear sometimes, requiring a refresh or app reload. I’m sorry, but continuously factory resetting my devices, and re-configuring things in GoogleHome over and over is not an excusable fix... that doesn’t fly in my work as a programmer, it shouldn’t fly here. You can have more stars when you implement a real solution, not the new version of “have you tried turning it off and on again”

I have a flat screen TV but it isn’t a “smart” TV. The Google Home app allows me to select from my phone what I want to stream from our WiFi using our Chromecast device plugged into the TV. While a video is streaming I can use other apps on my iPhone. I have already recommended it to other people, we added my daughter’s phone using the Google Home app in about 10 seconds so she can use the Chromecast whenever she wants.
A few days after writing the above review I was unable to connect to my WiFi either Chromecast, I called customer service and they said that they were already working on the problem and two days later the problem is fixed!!! I can’t ask more from a product all the way around!