With the launch of Google Home and Google Home Mini in India, Amazon has discounted the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot.
With the launch of the Google Home and Google Home Mini in India, Amazon is now offering discounts its own Alexa powered Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers. Under the offer, if buyers purchase two Amazon Echo Dot speakers in the same order, they can avail Rs 1,000 off on the total bill. If you buy any Two Amazon Echo speakers, you get Rs 3,000 off on the total amount. There is no discount offered on the Amazon Echo Plus. Amazon's move to discount the Echo range of speakers seems like a direct response and reaction to the launch of the Google Home and Home Mini speakers which offer similar, but not same voice-assisted services.
Currently, the Amazon Echo Dot is priced at Rs 4,499, whereas the Amazon Echo is priced at Rs 9,999, and the Amazon Echo Plus is priced at Rs 14,999. To put things into perspective, Google has priced the Google Home at Rs 9,999 and the Google Home Mini at Rs 4,499 in India, giving direct competition to the Echo Dot and Echo. Google hasn’t launched its Google Home Max in India which is currently available in the US. The Google Home family of speakers bring support for Google Assistant-powered voice commans and in India, Home users can currently access services such as Google Play Music, Netflix, Gaana, Saavn, and YouTube. It is expected that more services will be added in the coming days.
The Amazon Echo speakers, on the other hand, are integrated with Alexa, Amazon’s own smart assistant. Using the Echo, users can listen to the news, shop online, play music, call cabs, order food and more using voice commands. Using the Google Home speakers, one can currently only play music, stream content on a TV and ask the speaker to bring up information from the web with the help of the Google Assistant. Google did announce India-specific 'Actions' for the Assistant late last year, but they are still not available to users. Google's 'Actions' are similar to Alexa's 'Skills' and once introduced, will help users access more locally relevant services in the country.
Talking about the Amazon Echo devices that are currently discounted, the Echo Dot is the smallest of the smart speaker family and is best used when paired with another set of speakers at home. The larger Echo is louder and offers better sound quality with dual speakers powered by Dolby, while all the other features remain largely the same as the Echo Dot. The Echo Plus, although not on sale, is the most expensive of them all because it is also a smart home hub and showcases a taller design and more powerful speakers when compared to the Echo and Echo Dot. One good thing about the Echo speakers is that users can connect them to their any other speakers of their choice via 3.5mm Aux Out port. This is not possible on the Google Home.
We got our hands on the Google Home and you can read our impressions of the device here. You can also check out our in-depth analysis of the Amazon Echo Plus speaker here.
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