Google has so far done a pretty great job in the smart home race — between the stellar Google Home speakers and Google Assistant baked into the Android experience, we've all likely come to rely on Google's smart home assistant more and more over the past couple years. If you love the idea of controlling the lights around your home using just your voice, here are your best options for smart LED bulbs that work with Google Home. Philips Hue
LIFX Smart Lights
TP-Link Multicolor LED Bulbs
Sengled Element
Smartika
Nanoleaf Aurora Philips Hue
Philips is one of the leading manufacturers of wireless LED smart bulbs. The Philips Hue lineup features a multitude of different lighting options for around your home, which must be configured through the Philips Hue Bridge via. You're able to connect up to 50 lights to one Bridge and then configure and control them in so many different ways. Once set up, you're able to speak to your Google Home to set and adjust your Philips Hue lights throughout your house without leaving the couch, or easily turn off all the lights when you're leaving the house or it's time for bed. See at Amazon LIFX Smart Lights
LIFX offers its third generation of smart bulbs for both indoors and outdoors. Both offer 1100 lumens of brightness, with options to customize the look with 16 million colors and 1000 shades of warm to cool whites. No additional hardware is required to get things set up with Google Assistant as each bulb connects directly to your Wi-Fi network. A single A19 bulb starts at $50, but if you're planning to do up your home with LIFX bulbs, you're definitely better off buying the 4-pack of A19 bulbs for $196 See at Amazon TP-Link LED Bulbs
TP-Link offers a full line of smart LED lightbulbs along with other hardware including smart plugs and switches that allow you to convert lamps and appliances you already own into smart devices you can automate to power on or control with your voice. Whether you're fine with a standard A19 dimmable bulb ($20), a Multicolor A19 bulb ($36), these are quality products that do not require a hub to set up with Google Assistant. We'll link to the 3-pack starter kit below, which is your best value at just $55. See at Amazon Sengled Element
Sengled bulbs are some of the cheaper options for smart bulbs, but the tradeoff is that you will require a hub. The starter kit we've linked below includes four bulbs and the required hub for just $60 — not bad at all. From there, if you really want to tech out your home with smart bulbs, you can build out your home with 4-packs of bulbs for just $33 or an 8-pack of bulbs for $77. These are just your standard white dimmable smart bulbs and are ideal for lamps and fixtures around your home. See at Amazon Smartika
Smartika is a Canadian company that offers rather stylish home automation products for lighting your home fully compatible with Google Home as well as Amazon Alexa and IFTTT. Everything is controlled via the Smartika Hub, which lets you create groups and scenes by programming automated functions. The Hub also lets you connect to the Smartika mobile app, which lets you easily interconnect and control all your Smartika products. Beyond the Hub, Smartika offers five different lighting fixtures, which range from $135 for recessed ceiling lights to $500 for a full track light setup with four adjustable lights — perfect for a kitchen renovation. Installation is available for those living in Quebec and Ontario, otherwise, you're left to install things on your own via the included installation and user manual. See at Smartika Nanoleaf Aurora
Chris Monroe/CNET
It's been 16 months since the debut of the Google Home, and today the smart speaker finally arrives in Southeast Asia. But it's only in one country for now: Singapore.
Alongside the Google Home Mini, the Google Home speaker will be sold online and through retail stores across the island state. There's no word yet on when the newer Google Home Max will be made available.
Google didn't reveal whether its Home speaker will be sold in neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, and given the lack of greater availability of its previously announced Google WiFi mesh routers, there's a slim chance that the Home speaker will make its way to other markets for now (though it has already launched in India some weeks back).
The Home comes with a few cool tricks for its Singapore launch, though. It will support Singlish, the local English-based creole language, and have access to local services such as Bus Uncle, a public transportation chatbot.
Google has also enabled multi-user support for the Home in Singapore, a feature that wasn't available on imported units bought in the US. This means that the Home will recognise your voice as well as those of anyone else who lives with you. It'll be able to deliver personalized schedules or music based on who's asking.
The Google Home and Home Mini can be purchased online through the Singapore Google Store, or at retail outlets from April 20 onward at S$189 and S$79 respectively.
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Google’s Chromecast is an incredibly popular product, and for good reason. The ecosystem surrounding the streaming dongles is nothing short of massive. There’s so much you can do with it that it’s likely many users don’t fully understand what their device is capable of. Now, it appears that Google is testing a new feature on Chromecast that gives tips on the backdrop.
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When your Chromecast isn’t showing anything for a while, it shifts into “backdrop” mode. This shows the time, weather, and usually a gorgeous image of some sort. That could be art, or a photograph, or a satellite view. It’s a subtle feature for sure, but a fun one nonetheless.
Now, Google is apparently testing adding more information to this screen. One Reddit user noticed on his Chromecast that “ads” were showing up at the bottom of the screen. Apparently, they appeared shortly after rebooting the device, and haven’t appeared in the time since. The Chromecast was running on firmware version 1.30.113131, and promoted the Google Home casting functionality on a couple of applications.
Simply appearing at the bottom of the screen, these “ads” are more like tips. They simply point out that users can cast content from certain services from a Google Home device. The user noted that, while he did own multiple Google Home devices, he did not have the Viki or CBS All Access services noted by the device on his phone.
9to5Google’s Take
Unlike the Reddit post implied, these definitely aren’t advertisements. Rather, these are simply tips that can give users a bit more insight into what their devices are capable of. Especially seeing that these only appear for a few seconds before disappearing, I can’t imagine they’d be a reason to take drastic action as some commenters said they’d be doing, especially since alternatives like Roku are far more blatant with ads.
What do you think of these tips? Would you be alright with Google expanding them to more users? Drop a comment below and let us know!
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Google Assistant speakers — and upcoming smart displays — have wide access to your personal information from calendar appointments to shopping lists and can even make payments. Given this increased functionality, Google is now listing Home in the device section of My Account settings.
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Several years ago, Google redesigned the My Account page to provide quick access to settings and tools, like sign-in, security, and personal info. One aspect is a “Device activity” section that notes what phone, tablet, smartwatch, or computer last accessed your account.
Given that Personal results on Google Home can already surface your calendar and flights, as well as make purchases, it’s important that users have tight control over these already public smart speakers.
This oversight makes even more sense in light of upcoming Google Pay integration that allows you to send/request money with your voice, and how we spotted email as a new piece of information that can be surfaced by Personal results.
At the moment, the integration does not appear to be fully live, with users only having access to basic details like “last synced” and the physical location of the speaker down to the city-level. All other device entries in “Recently used devices” feature the ability to immediately remove account access, which forces users to re-enter credentials.
Additionally, the listing uses a generic laptop icon that does not reflect the device type, while not accurately reflecting the number of Home speakers that a user has. In our testing, only one “Google Home” entry appears regardless of quantity logged into an account or even the type of device you have.
Meanwhile, this Google Home entry is only appearing for a handful of our staff. It does not seem to be fully rolled out for all users. Hopefully, this is not a bug and that Google continues listing Assistant devices that have access to your account and data.
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