All about smart speakers: Are they worth buying

If you have been watching the IPL, you could not have missed the advertisements for Amazon Echo — an old lady looks at the speaker and requests it to play the song ‘ Chura liya hai ’ and within seconds, you get to hear the melodious Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi crooning.

In another advertisement, a young girl asks the question, ‘What is the capital of Australia?’ in what is a family quiz at their dining table. Her dad, in an attempt to show off his worldly knowledge blurts, ‘Sydney’ with an I-know-it-all smugness on his face. The girl turns to Alexa, a speaker and asks for the answer to which the speaker rightly responds ‘Canberra,’ much to the chagrin of her dad. 

Both these ads are clearly aimed at parents, who are only too eager to provide anything that’s intelligent and smart for their kids. Truth be told, my wife and I seriously considered buying one for our daughters. They are not very expensive so we started to explore the market.

There’s of course Amazon’s Echo series of products. Google has its Home series. On the top end of the price scale is Apple’s Homepod series. Given that I’ve never been part of the Apple ecosystem, it was out of contention. So, the choice for me was between Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home. 

After a lot of research and speaking with friends who had already bought them, I made my decision. What did I eventually pick? The answer is neither. Yes, I decided not to get any smart speaker and here are my top two reasons.

It’s nice to have but not a must-have: My suspicion is that the smart speaker’s novelty will soon wash off. The smart speaker reminds me of one other ‘in-thing’. At the corner of my hall lies a leg-massager that my kids gifted us on our wedding anniversary last year. We used it a lot in the first couple of days and ever since, it’s been lying idle, untouched. The smart speaker is bound to go the same route as the leg massager. Once my kids experiment with it and show it off to their friends and visiting relatives, I can foresee this thing being neglected completely.

We already have it on our phone: All the artificial intelligence drives and smart technology have been installed in our mobile phones already. The latest versions of Android or iOS will constantly have the best versions of technology. So my point is that if everyone at home has already a phone, why not simply sync it with the Bluetooth speaker instead of splurging money on yet another device? 

Here is a good tip for you. If you have not been using Bluetooth-enabled speakers at home constantly, then there is a very good chance you will not end up using the smart speakers either. Am I completely dissing the smart speakers? Not entirely. The smart speakers will eventually start picking up more users as time goes by. Right now, I don’t think they are worth it just to play songs or answer random questions that a simple Google search can suffice.