You’ve probably heard about voice assistants from everyone. There’s the infamous ones: Google Home and the Amazon Alexa. These two devices have taken the world of smart home technology by storm, taking things up a notch and are ideally the most popular ones preferred by almost every customer.
Voice Assistants have been in use for a few years now, like Siri on your Apple iPhones and Google Assistant on Android smartphones. With the introduction of Smart Speakers featuring built in voice assistants, their popularity increases and so does their demand, so if you’re looking to buy into the hype and get one yourself too you may be asking yourself a few questions – is it worth it? What are the privacy concerns? Are they reliable and efficient?
Well, fear not for we have the answers to some of your questions right here! This is a mini homeowners guide to voice assistants!
Voice Assistants Featured In Smart Speakers
Smart Speakers have made a mark on the market, with their one outstanding feature being built in voice assistants. Together with a voice assistant, the device can accomplish quite a lot.
Amazon’s Echo that features Alexa can play your favorite music, play YouTube videos straight to your smart TV and even play podcasts out loud, while simultaneously having the ability to set alarms, create schedules and reminders on your calendar, and even browse the web for you. However, a significantly larger and more important role is that it can also sync to other smart devices such as smart thermostats, smart bulbs, and even smart smoke detectors such that you can control them with your voice through simple voice commands apart from their usual mobile applications. Comparatively, a regular Bluetooth speaker may only have the ability to sync and connect with your smartphone to play songs and answer calls at the most.
Virtual Assistant for Your Home
Since smart home products aim to make life easier, virtual assistants like the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant can help you with almost everything around the house, even if it doesn’t support voice enabled control – hence the term virtual assistant.
When integrated with multiple devices across your house, you will truly be living a truly hands-free experience. Now is probably the best time to invest in a virtual assistant to make your home all the more smarter, versatile and innovative as the world moves towards a much more technologically advanced age.
The difference between Bluetooth speakers and smart speakers aside, let us look at the functionality that these products can provide.
Sync to Your Smartphone
Whether you need assistance with basic tasks, such as setting an alarm, creating a schedule, browsing the web for a query or making an appointment, your voice assistant can do those for you, through simple voice command, but is that all it can do?
Well, no. Voice assistants have the ability to sync and tune into your daily lifestyle and activity through your smartphone, such that they can track your exercise routine and set up personalized reminders synced to your phone calendar.
Sync to Other Smart Home Devices
In addition to that, it can sync with any of the other smart home devices that you have around the house which will then enable you to control and command them with just your voice!
If you have a smart thermostat, you can easily ask your voice assistant to lower the temperature without moving an inch yourself, or you can have it unlock the door when integrated to the smart lock installed at the front door. Surely this gives you an idea of what a voice assistant can do. What’s more, is that you can easily turn appliances and devices, which are not necessarily smart, off or on through a simple voice command.
Yes, you read it right! If you need to turn off your microwave or charger while it’s plugged into a smart plug, just say so!
No Privacy Breach
A lot of users have privacy concerns when it comes to voice assistants. Companies have recognized these concerns and developed solutions for them. If you want your voice assistant to only listen and well, record information when you directly talk to it through a direct command such as “Hey, Google,” then you can simply ask your device to stop voice command, and integrate it as such.
If you’re still a little doubtful about this solution, both the Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant offer users the option to regularly delete and regulate the information that is collected on a daily business as such.
Conclusion
To conclude, voice assistants are popular and in-demand, and are rightfully so considering how the world is moving towards an advanced age where voice assistants would definitely be a big part of and help make our lives much easier.
These are the basics of what voice assistants are about and how great they work when they come built into smart speakers. If you’re looking to get one for your home, head on over to FirstEnergy Home’s website www.firtsenergyhome.com and browse through their collection of voice assistants.