Latest news with #smartHome
Digital Trends
5 days ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
Get security and style with a Ring doorbell at 50% off
Ever since we released our updated list of the best smart locks in 2025, our minds have been locked in to thinking about security. We're not the only ones. There's an amazing Best Buy deal going on right now on the Ring Battery Doorbell that's going to bring your smart home gadget game to the next level if you don't have something like it already. Normally $100, the Ring Battery Doorbell is now just $50, splitting the price directly in two. Tap the button below to see it yourself or keep reading to see our take on the Ring Doorbell. Why you should buy the Ring Battery Doorbell A lot of the convenience of the best video doorbells is removed by the initial upfront effort. There's the cost, of course, but then comes the efforts to wire things up. When we first considered the Ring Battery Doorbell, the use of a battery (and, therefore, no wires) is absolutely one of the first things we noted about it. That, and the wide 150-degree viewing angle that makes it easier to see a whole party of guests (or that out-of-the-way package that just got delivered) with the device's 2K camera. However, you can always hardwire the system later if you get tired of recharging the battery, not that likely will as the battery should last months off of a single charge. With a small Ring subscription you can even upgrade the device as a home protection system with a team to help you. We consider the Ring Battery Doorbell to be an upgrade vs the Ring Doorbell 2 for the ease of installation and expanded features range. The Ring Battery Doorbell is normally $100, but you can get yours for a low price of just $50 if you act now by tapping the button below. It's a low price to feel more secure and have better convenience at home. It also happens to be one of the best smart home deals going on at the moment, so make sure you get it while you can.
Gizmodo
05-08-2025
- Gizmodo
Google's Smart Home Ecosystem Is Crumbling
When I started using a Google smart speaker six years ago, I was all in. Voice assistants have never been perfect—in fact, they always kind of sucked—but I found (having also used Alexa and Siri) that Google Assistant sucked just a little bit less than the competition. And the fact that it was actually linked to Google search for real web queries made it even better. Flash forward to now, and everything I just wrote couldn't be further from the truth. Things are arguably worse for the Google Assistant and Google's entire smart home ecosystem than they've ever been, and the transition (or full-on enshittification, if you're feeling spicy) into the dumpster was seemingly fast. As a result of that dysfunction, people who use the Google Home platform as their hub for smart home products like lights, cameras, and speakers have been pouring their frustrations onto forums like Reddit en masse over the past month. For those not-so-happy customers, the Google Home app seemed to be flat-out broken, meaning some affected couldn't even turn their lights on or off. When I say shit was broken, I mean shit was broken. Those problems were, in fact, so bad that Google addressed issues publicly on social media and promised to do better. Things did not improve, however. Issues for lots of people have persisted, and last week, news of a possible class action lawsuit started to percolate. Yikes. Hey everyone, I want to acknowledge the recent feedback about Google Assistant reliability on our home devices. I sincerely apologize for what you're experiencing and feeling! — Anish Kattukaran (@AnishKattukaran) July 23, 2025If you haven't been using Google products for your smart home needs, it may seem surprising that Google could so suddenly and rapidly drop the ball on an entire ecosystem of hardware and software. If you have been using Google Home and Google Assistant for your smart home needs, however, you're less likely to be surprised by the recent fallout. As someone who has been in this ecosystem, I can say from experience that recent blowback isn't the product of some bug or anything spontaneous, for that matter; it feels more like the product of years of erosion and neglect. The complaints over Google Home and Google Assistant date back so far that I initially ignored recent issues bubbling up on forums. More dissatisfaction with Google Assistant? In my line of work, we call that a day that ends in 'y.' And I'm not the only one. I'm just going to quote this full post below, not because it's special, but because it's a common complaint—a part that summarizes the whole. One Redditor wrote on r/GoogleHome two months ago: 'It used to be amazing. Then it started being more and more unreliable for activation. Then not being useful at all for opening times. Then being useless for pretty much any question that involves some thinking. Now I can't even stop a timer that is actively going off because it thinks that nothing's playing. I'm so tired of it.' It's hard to say when the slide toward the garbage bin started to happen; maybe it was when Google stopped collecting and listening to people's voice commands years ago; maybe it was when Google started to pivot more towards chatbots and generative AI, leaving its other platforms to rot; maybe the whole Google Home team got locked in some Severance-style room inside of Google's Mountain View HQ and no one has been able to find them for a few years. Regardless of how we got here, the fact that we're here now of all times feels almost ironic. By Google's estimation—and the estimation of competitors like Amazon and Apple—this is supposed to be a golden age of voice assistants. Thanks to large language models, voice assistants are supposed to get a major glow-up and should be more capable of understanding natural language and multistep commands. Maybe that will still happen, but for now, all of that promise is still in the future, with Siri delayed and Amazon's Alexa+ idling in early access. I don't know, maybe you just have to hit rock bottom in order to make progress, but at this point, it's hard to take Google's word for it, so all we're left with is a broken home, so to speak. From the outside, it looks to me like Google's smart home empire is crumbling, and for the sake of all of us and our stupid smart lights, I hope a fix is in sight.
Gizmodo
30-07-2025
- Gizmodo
Google Home Is So Bad That a Lawsuit Could Be on Its Way
There's been some trouble at home lately. Not your home, hopefully, but if you live in Google HQ, then maybe. Last week, people using the Google Home app flooded Reddit with complaints over smart home products that mysteriously stopped working—lights, cameras, smart plugs, you name it. Those complaints were so numerous, in fact, that Google even bothered to address them and do better. Things in the Googleverse were (or are) bad, to say the least. But just because they're bad right now doesn't mean they can't get worse—and worse they may still get. For Google, that is. As it turns out, Google's overtures about fixing its smart home app and doing better may not be enough for people, and all of that pushback may actually result in a good, old-fashioned class-action lawsuit. 'Kaplan Gore has begun investigating a possible class action against Google LLC for failing to remedy increasing problems with its Google Home 'smart home' service,' the law firm Kaplan Gore said in a statement. 'Unfortunately, many users have reported functionality issues with Google Home and associated Google and/or Nest devices, resulting in commands not being recognized or properly executed. Users are reporting that they are experiencing these issues despite their devices having previously functioned normally and despite having a stable internet connection.' Hey everyone, I want to acknowledge the recent feedback about Google Assistant reliability on our home devices. I sincerely apologize for what you're experiencing and feeling! — Anish Kattukaran (@AnishKattukaran) July 23, 2025Kaplan Gore also has a form for any users experiencing those issues and is asking them to fill out some information and join a class action. In the immortal words of crime-fighting cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, 'ru-roh.' On one hand, it's wild that a company as titanic and well-resourced as Google let its smart home app get to the point of being the subject of a possible class-action lawsuit, but on the other—if you've been using Google Assistant for a while now—it feels long overdue. Google Assistant has steadily gotten worse over the years, and just about anyone using it on a daily basis has noticed. Even simple prompts for turning your lights on or off feel hit and miss. That makes recent issues in the Google Home app feel even more egregious, especially since those issues prevented many from using smart products in their homes entirely. According to loads of complaints on Reddit, Google Home has been so broken that some users have reported being unable to even turn their smart lights on and off properly. And it's not just lights; all kinds of smart devices have been swept up, including other speakers and even (disconcertingly) cameras and smart doorbells. If you're experiencing similar issues, by the way, you can try pulling open the Google Home app and tapping Settings in the bottom-right corner, then tap 'Works with Google,' and a list of your synced apps should show up. If they're no longer synced, re-sync the app by finding it under 'Add new.' If they're still synced and not working, unsync the app by tapping on the icon and then tapping 'Unlink account.' After that, you can try syncing once more and hope that it works.
Android Authority
24-07-2025
- Android Authority
I ditched Google Home years ago, so why are you still using it in 2025?
Lil Katz / Android Authority 🗣️ This is an open thread. We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments and vote in the poll below — your take might be featured in a future roundup. It wasn't that long ago that Google Home seemed like the smart home platform to be invested in. Google Assistant had numerous advantages over Amazon Alexa, Google's smart home hardware was among the best on the market, and unique third-party options from Lenovo and JBL kept things interesting. But fast forward to 2025, and Google Home is a shell of its former self. Google killed third-party smart speakers/displays, the company's own hardware ambitions have all but stalled out, and the Google Home app is — to put it nicely — a mess. This recently came to light in a Reddit thread on r/GoogleHome, where current Google Home users expressed their mounting frustration with the platform. Complaints range from Google's smart speakers being unable to understand people's commands to slow/delayed responses, as well as routines not working as expected. As a former Google Home user myself, I can, unfortunately, sympathize with all of this. Google Home was the smart home platform I used for my first couple of apartments, and between 2016 and about 2019, things were great. The original Google Home speaker and Google Home Hub remain some of my favorite pieces of smart home hardware. The wood-backed Lenovo Smart Display was a staple in my kitchen, and Google Assistant, along with the Google Home app, were as reliable as I could ask for. But at some point, things began to take a noticeable turn for the worse. My speakers started failing to hear my 'OK Google' commands and would often misinterpret what I said to them. Asking Google Assistant to turn a smart light on/off often resulted in an error message, the Assistant forgot room names I had set up, etc. There wasn't a single day or instance where everything broke, but over time, things deteriorated to the point where I decided to replace all my Google Home speakers and displays with Amazon Alexa ones. Rita El Khoury / Android Authority While I reached my breaking point with Google Home, it's apparent that many people are still suffering through it, and that makes me curious — why? If you're still using Google Home in 2025, I'd love to know why you've stuck with the platform as long as you have. Is it an issue of sunk-cost fallacy? Is your Google Home experience not as bad as other people's? Do you use your smart speakers infrequently enough that you can live with a few bugs here and there? Why are you still using Google Home in 2025? 618 votes I've invested too much time/money into it. 69 % The bugs and glitches don't bother me that much. 16 % My experience has been seamless and bug-free. 8 % Other (let us know in the comments). 6 % No matter how long you've been a Google Home user and wherever you find yourself — completely fed up with the platform or happy to continue with it — I'd love to hear from you, from one former Google Home user to another. Vote in the poll above and sound off with more thoughts in the comments below, and let's keep the conversation going there.
Android Authority
23-07-2025
- Android Authority
I continue to use Google Home and its speakers, but I hate everything about it
I've been in the Google Home camp since the first speaker launched in November of 2016, though you might even say that I started earlier, with the first Chromecast in 2013. Since then, I've had a couple of Lenovo Smart Displays, some JBL Link speakers, the JBL Link View, the Google Home Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Hub, and many others that are too esoteric to remember. Today, my home houses two Nest Audios, a Pixel Tablet, and a Nest Hub, scattered across three floors, and even though I'm at the end of my patience rope with all of them, I still use them every day. I don't think I'm alone in this contradictory state. Every week I run across a Reddit thread of frustrated users reporting new bugs and issues, or voicing their impatience at the state of Google's smart home. And I nod in agreement, again and again, because I am them. They are me. We're all in this unhealthy relationship with Google's smart home platform together. And we can't escape. Why are you still using Google Home in 2025? 0 votes I've invested too much time/money into it. NaN % The bugs and glitches don't bother me that much. NaN % My experience has been seamless and bug-free. NaN % Other (let us know in the comments). NaN % What annoys me about my Google smart speakers, every day C. Scott Brown / Android Authority If I had a penny for every time my Google speakers and hubs… plain out refused to hear me, misunderstood what I said, decided this is not my own voice, forgot that they can control a specific device, forgot that they can execute a certain command on a device, forgot my entire routine and the keyword that triggers it, decided to tell me a long story instead of giving a short answer, told me they're executing a command and then failed to do it, took forever to do something, or answered on the furthest speaker away despite me being literally in front of another one, … well, then I'd be a millionnaire. Not a day goes by without my Nest speaker, hub, or Pixel tablet failing at some point. It's so frequent that I'm desensitized to it now; I try again and insist as if it's normal for tech to fail this frequently before getting it right. Or, if I'm in a hurry, I grab my phone to tap a button, manually, bypassing the entire raison d'être of a smart speaker. My Google smart speakers are useless, on average, about half the time I try to use them. 'Hey Google, I'm cooking,' is a routine I use every day to trigger all three air purifiers in my home and set them to the highest fan speed. Google understands me one time out of three when I say those simple words. My husband is luckier; Google gets him about four out of five times. So I've resorted to asking my husband to tell Google to start the routine because I'm tired of hearing nothing but silence. On the other hand, 'Set a chicken timer' sets a normal timer for my husband, but does the whole chicken animation when I ask for it, which irritates my husband. He wants the animation and sounds, too. For several weeks, 'Set a 20-minute timer' would open the French 20minutes news website. Anytime my husband says, 'Nothing,' the speakers answer him with the Wikipedia page of the Nothing phone company. When I play music on the ground floor, which is supposed to include both my Nest Hub and my Samsung Soundbar, the music is out of sync half the time; the other half, Google says it'll play music on my speaker group and then tells me 'Something went wrong, try again later.' Talking to this so-called smart speaker feels dumber than chatting with the snail chilling on my wet porch now. The one thing it excels at is telling me and my husband the weather, and even then, it switches to Fahrenheit every few weeks even though we've repeatedly set it and told it and insisted to get it in Celsius. 'Something went wrong, try again later,' is the soundtrack of my life. When a timer goes off in one room and I'm in another, I have to shout and hope the other speaker hears me: 'Stop' doesn't do anything on the speaker near me; it might even confuse Google because 'Nothing is playing right now.' How can it not understand that I'm stopping the timer in the other room baffles me. Plus, because I use Gemini on my phone, multiple calendar support has been kaput for me for several months now. I can have the busiest day with work and family engagements, but my Nest Audio will tell me my calendar is free because none of these are on my personal account. And don't get me started on how atrociously limited the Pixel Tablet is in a multi-user house. It only supports one voice — mine — so my husband can never ask it for his events, his shopping list, his music, or his reminders. We've relegated it to my office so he doesn't throw it out the window after the millionth, 'I'm sorry, I can't do that yet.' I've tried enrolling in Google Home previews and leaving them, updating my speakers and resetting them, improving my router and home connection, as well as every other trick in the book to no avail. My Google smart speakers are useless, on average, about half the time I try to use them. The Google Home app got better, but is still very frustrating Rita El Khoury / Android Authority It's been 18 months since I wrote an article praising the Google Home app, saying it's on the right path. Sadly, not much has changed since, and even though I love the ubiquitous smart home panel, there's so much that annoys me every day about this app. The biggest example for me is how the Google Home app becomes less useful the more devices you have. Scrolling endlessly through large similar icons becomes a waste of time, and I'm tired of having my rooms sorted alphabetically without any custom sorting. I don't want to see the bathroom lights before the bedroom or living room. I don't want to see my motion sensors take up a large tile like every other light or thermostat either, so why can't I hide them? I've set up my Favorites to create a semblance of a custom panel, but even then, why can't I make smaller tiles for the devices I use less often? Support for third-party cameras is still abysmal, too. I have two TP-Link cameras that are compatible with Google Home, but they don't show their live feed in the app or on the home panel of my Google TV Streamer. Why? Because Google still chooses a few partner companies to elevate to a status similar to the Nest Cams, while the others are left in nowhere land. And then, there are the routines. In an ideal world, I'd be able to set those up so I rarely, if ever, speak to Google Assistant, letting my home react to certain conditions and situations by itself without any voice commands. In reality, I've been able to create a few routines, but not nearly as many as I would've liked. For instance, Home and Away routines are restricted to light controls only. Why can't I turn off my TV or change the thermostat's mode when I leave home? Why can I not turn on the A/C when I get back home? I don't know. My air purifier supports all these modes But not in custom routines So I work around that by writing voice commands Custom routines are a bit more powerful, but still lack so many options. For example, I can control my air purifier's mode and fan speed in the Google Home app, but when I build a routine, I can only turn it on or off. Additionally, I can see several air quality metrics from my Sensibo Elements in the Google Home app, but I can't create a routine that turns on the air purifier each time the TVOC or CO2 levels are high; that data just doesn't appear in the 'if' part of the routine creation. The only way to bypass these is to use the code editor, and even then, the results have been hit-or-miss for me. And to make my Pixel Tablet play music when I turn on my office light, I had to type the command instead of using the visual picker because, for some unknown reason, you can't create a routine that plays music on the Pixel Tablet (on other speakers, yes). When all of these controls and parameters are available in the Google Home app, why do they not show up in the routine creation menu? I couldn't tell you. Why do I keep torturing myself then? Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Ah, the million-dollar question. To be honest, I don't really know or have an answer. I have a series of theories and thoughts about why I stick with Google's excruciating smart home platform, and I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. There's the sunk cost fallacy where I just can't walk away from something I've invested so much money and time in. There's the evil you know versus the evil you don't; I keep testing the Alexa app on my devices to see if it's any better and realize it has a different and equally frustrating set of issues, too. There's the hope that with Gemini, things will get better. There's the fact that I write on Android Authority, I own Pixel phones and watches and Google TVs, and so does my husband, and Google Home is the only platform that makes sense for us. There's the casting capability and its compatibility with my Samsung soundbar. And there's the simple photo album feature that I cherish more than anything on my Pixel Tablet and Nest Hub and that I wouldn't give up for anything else. Between the sunk cost fallacy, reticence to change, and the evil I know, there are many reasons why I stick with Google Home. There's also the fact that when things work, they work. And I'm an optimist who hopes they'll work the same way next time, too. I've bought and started using a Home Assistant Yellow to try to extricate myself from Google's ecosystem. That has been a long, painful, and frustrating journey, too. I love that I'm in control of my new Home Assistant setup, but I hate having to babysit every aspect of it. What I gained in control over my smart home, I lost in troubleshooting, setup, and ease of use. There's no ideal smart home platform out there, and as I said earlier… the evil I know. I feel that that's where most of us, Google Home survivors, are nowadays. We don't see the grass being greener anywhere else, so we might as well stick with the patchy blot we have here in the hopes that it'll get better. Soon™.
