The 5 Things Every Good Smart Speaker Needs to Get Right

The rising numbers of competing smart speakers resulted in a lot of improvements to these 5 aspects of the devices.

A Bluetooth Speaker

The Sound Quality

Since the first iteration, smart speakers have been intended to play music, so it's normal to expect them to be equipped with great audio hardware, however, only recently have we seen this aspect of the gadget be given importance with devices like the Google assistant-enabled Sonos One from the audio devices' manufacturer Sonos, and the HomePod made by Apple with extra attention given to the sound quality, equipped with Apple's own smart assistant Siri. On the software side, all the major music streaming service have been available from the start: Spotify, Pandora, and TuneIn are all supported on both Alexa and Google assistant speakers, with Amazon music and Prime music being exclusive on Alexa, and Google's music services being exclusive to its Google assistant devices.

The Smart Assistant

A smart speaker needs to be able to take voice commands and respond accordingly, it is the core feature of the device, the better this feature gets, the better the smart speaker becomes. Having a large number of possible commands as well as contextual responses improve the practicality of the smart speaker, in addition to processing the commands quickly and responding in a natural voice. In this regard, the Google assistant has gotten a lot better, but the Amazon Alexa still has a wider range of available skills.

The Microphone

Smart speakers usually are placed somewhere where they're not intended to be moved or carried a lot, so they should have the ability to hear voice commands from a distance, and the longer that distance is, the more useful the gadget becomes. Also, the assistant should be able to recognize the voices of its multiple users, the spoken commands -without confusing words- and its wake phrase when it's being called. In order for this aspect to be improved, special attention needs to be given to the placement of the microphones and the overall design of the product.

The Privacy

Privacy might not be an issue for some people, but it's a big enough issue for a lot of people to warrant companies to give the end user options to mute the microphone for example, or to cover a camera. But the companies that are serious about protecting their users' privacy won't be saving the audio recorded while the smart speaker was waiting for the wake phrase, instead, they would be improving the security of these devices and the data collected and stored on them to prevent the hacking and exposure of private information.

The Design and the Aesthetics

The first generation Amazon echo was basically a tall dark plastic cylinder with a blue circular indicator light, Amazon probably gave it this futuristic look to attract tech people, and it did, but it managed to gather a lot more consumers. When Google decided to enter this market, it focused on designing a smart speaker that would look good and fit where it's placed, and others followed with the 2nd generation echo and the Apple HomePod being designed like pieces of decoration.

Currently, there isn't a smart speaker that is the best in all these aspects, most of them get somethings right and other things wrong, but Amazon and Google's decision to allow manufacturers to integrate their devices with Alexa and Google assistant means that we are going to see more devices in this category in the future, and one of them could be the best smart speaker in all 5 aspects.