Late is better than never, and that’s exactly what Samsung is thinking with its first-ever smart speaker: the Galaxy Home. Announced at this morning’s Unpacked event, alongside the Galaxy Note 9 and the Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Home is a Bixby-powered smart speaker that definitely looks unique. It’s fabric-wrapped and is a similar shape as a Google Home, except it’s much larger; it looks like it’s a decent-bit bigger than Apple’s HomePod. It has defined play/pause and skip track buttons on the top of the speaker. And it stands on three stubby-looking metal legs.
Not a ton is known about the Galaxy Home yet, and Samsung says that they’ll release more information this November. As for specs, we know that it features six built-in speakers and a subwoofer. Its acoustics have been engineered by AKG, which Samsung owns, too. It has eight far-field microphones. And it responds to “Hi, Bixby.”
Pricing and release date information, as stated above, won’t be released until November. But if I had to guess, I’d say that the Galaxy Home would fall around $350, the same price as Apple’s HomePod. Although too late for many, Samsung’s smart speaker will definitely have a market. There are way too many homes that have Samsung appliances — refrigerators, washers and dryers, and cooking ovens — so this smart speaker has the potential to control many things that an Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod just simply cannot.
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