Samsung has joined the virtual home assistant game alsong with Apple, Amazon, and Google. TechCrunch writer Brian Heater reviews the Galaxy Home, Samsung's answer to the Apple HomePod.
While there are clear HomePod echos here, the design language is still unique. The speaker takes a quasi-teardrop form, which a base that seamless transitions into three metal tripods. It’s an interesting choice, which suggests that the premium speaker would be just as at home on the floor as it would a desk or tabletop. There are no physical buttons on the top of the device. Instead its a touch surface that illuminates as a bright, white ring. There’s also a light up AKG logo, in case you forget that Samsung now owns the company that tunes all of its audio products. There don’t appear to by any inputs here, either, so there’s no plugging in auxiliary products. Instead, you’ll fully wireless on this one. It’s hard to imagine Bixby itself being a compelling enough motivating factor for more than a small handful of users, so the importance of Samsung’s Spotify partnership can’t be understated. Even among Apple users, there’s likely still a sizable contingent of users still holding onto Spotify accounts.
