A lot of shoppers are debating whether or not to buy a smart speaker. Although more people are using smart speakers as a control module for applications related to the smart home as a result of the development of smart technology and the interconnectivity of smart devices, some consumers are still hesitant to make the move.
Are smart speakers worth it? The truth is that smart speakers can be fantastic for those who already possess other smart gadgets to improve the performance of their current system, but for people whose homes and phones don’t already have smart technology embedded into them, a smart speaker doesn’t really add anything.
Smart speakers are the ideal starting point for your smart home control system if you intend to make your house a smart home. However, they could be a waste of money if you aren’t extremely involved in integrating a lot of smart technology into your house. Learn more about using smart speakers in your house and when to get one by reading on.
What Can Smart Speakers Do?
A stereo system called smart speakers differs from conventional speakers in a few ways.
- Wireless, voice-activated controls: One of the greatest benefits of smart technology is hands-free speech activation, and as a result of integrated data collection, these applications are becoming ever-more-sophisticated.
- Audio input and audio output: Unlike vintage boomboxes, modern smart speakers are capable of more than just playing music. They have the ability to understand voice or musical orders.
- Search engine: A smart speaker’s personal assistant software enables it to respond to any query that can be fairly addressed by using a search engine like Google, enhancing users’ productivity by preventing them from having to interrupt an activity in order to hunt up some information.
- Calling and texting: Smart speakers can also serve as phones, enabling voice-activated calls, text messages, and voice messages in addition to their roles as radios and search engines. Users have the option of leaving reminders and notes for themselves as well as for others.
- Smart home command center: To combine the controls for a number of various smart home systems, smart speakers can be utilized as the main form of control for a smart home system.
Smart speakers are versatile devices that may do a variety of functions by employing wireless internet as a source of informational control, a source of data, and a method of communication, despite the fact that they may be referred to as speakers.
How Do Smart Speakers Work?
A wireless internet connection serves as the cornerstone of smart speaker technology and smart technology in general. These smart gadgets can cooperate in a symbiotic system to function as tools that communicate with the Internet of Things by using a number of connected apps.
The following are some of the technologies that smart speakers use to operate:
- input and output for audio
- Voice recognition for controls
- Data collecting for service improvement that is both audio-activated and ambient
- Connectedness through app software
Its main drawback is the ubiquitous wireless internet access that makes smart speaker technology possible. The usage of smart speakers for corporate advertising is strongly correlated with the notoriously unsecure nature of wireless internet and the collecting (and sale) of user data.
Smart Speakers And Privacy
The fact that smart speakers are linked to mass surveillance technology is one of the main obstacles preventing them from becoming as commonplace as smartphones. The same technology that makes smart speakers so effective in the home also makes it possible to collect massive amounts of personal data on the general public without their knowledge.
While it is true that the majority of data collected by smart devices is used for relatively innocent purposes like targeted advertising, many people are wary of keeping a smart speaker in their homes due to the possibility that the technology could be misused by eavesdropping government officials (or even just Amazon employees).
Both Google and Amazon have acknowledged using their sophisticated technologies to secretly record and listen in on customers. After knowing that, it doesn’t seem all that unexpected that more than half of prospective purchasers who don’t already possess a smart speaker have severe concerns about privacy issues with them.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which forbids the collection of child data without parental agreement, raises another serious potential privacy risk with respect to smart speakers. Smart speakers are not expressly made to record children, but they also lack the capability to selectively record audio based on the subject’s age.
Smart Speakers And Product Ecosystems
Most of a smart speaker’s value comes from the fact that it can connect all of your other smart devices and apps into a single system that you can control with your voice. If you want to turn your house into a smart home, buying a set of smart speakers can make it a lot easier to control all of the smart systems in your house.
Some consumer watchdogs say that smart device ecosystems create a product monopoly where a person feels locked into a single brand for all of their electronics to maximize compatibility. However, committing to a product ecosystem or brand lets a person who uses smart technology get the most out of their smart devices by syncing them.
The Internet of Things is based on the idea that all of a person’s smart devices (smartphone, thermostat, security systems, etc.) can be controlled and used from one easy-to-reach place. Most people do this with an app on their phone or by talking to their smart speaker.
One of the best things about smart device systems is that they make it easier to work quickly and spontaneously. For example, you can quickly write down a thought before you forget it without having to write it down on paper or try to keep up with it.
Instead, you can just tell your smart speaker what you want to remember and have it record it on your phone so you can review it later. That’s just one way a smart speaker can be used to make everyday life easier.
Smart Speakers And Shopping
People who don’t see shopping as a marathon can use smart speakers to make it much easier to keep their homes stocked with the things they need. With the help of an app, your smart speaker can not only keep track of your regular shopping list, but it can also let you order more of any item you run out of with just a voice command.
Smart speakers do make it easier to buy things on the spot, but they also make window shopping easier. Want to make sure you don’t forget a good gift idea? You’ll have a lot of ideas for your next holiday if you say it out loud to your smart speaker and add it to a wish list.
Most of the time, smart speakers aren’t worth it just as a way to buy things. Most people want to be able to see what they’re buying before they buy it so they don’t buy something they don’t want. This has made online shopping popular but has kept smart speaker shopping from taking off.
One of the biggest problems with smart speakers and shopping, besides the fact that they don’t have a screen, is that the audio response system isn’t very good. Even after being on the market for years, many smart speakers still have trouble understanding even simple commands. This makes it not worth the trouble to use a smart speaker to place more complicated shopping orders.
The Best Smart Speakers
There are a lot of smart speakers on the market, but only a few are known for being of higher quality and having a better brand name.
Since smart speakers are still fairly new and have some compatibility issues, it’s best to go with a well-known brand like Amazon, Google, or Apple to make sure you don’t end up with a low-quality one that doesn’t work well with apps.
Here are some of the best smart speakers you can buy for your smart home:
- Amazon Echo
- Apple Homepod
- Google Home
All of these speakers have great technical support and warranties, and they can also be connected to a wide range of similar products. This lets you use your smart home system in as many parts of your daily life as possible.
This not only helps you get the most out of your smart system, but it also lets you make your smart home fit your needs through software apps and the integration of other brand-compatible smart devices.
Which Other Smart Devices Can Be Connected To Smart Speakers?
Even though smart speakers can do simple things with wireless internet, their real value comes from the fact that they can be used to control other smart devices in the home with your voice. Here are some things you can control with a smart speaker to make your home smart:
- Thermostats: Whether you’re controlling the temperature in your home or an outdoor greenhouse on your property, you can use your smart speaker or smartphone to change the temperature and keep an eye on it, like for this unit, even when you’re not there.
- Closed-circuit surveillance and security cameras: If you have a security camera system, you can control it with your voice using a smart speaker. Smart speakers can also be used to record conversations that are going on around them.
- Electronic locks on the outside of a building: Voice recognition software can be used to unlock doors with smart speakers. This is especially helpful for people who always lose their keys or don’t want to fumble around in the dark to find them.
- Gardening systems: Hose faucet timers, sprinkler systems, misters, and other irrigation systems can be connected to smart speakers and other smart software. This lets tech-savvy gardeners take care of their crops and even check on their plants with hygrometers.
- Lighting systems: This package comes with a smart speaker that can be used to talk to your home’s exterior and interior lighting systems, from simple light switches to mood lighting apps like Hue.
Since smart technology and voice controls are being added to more and more gadgets, the number of things that can be used with smart speakers keeps growing. This isn’t a fad piece of technology; it’s a core technology that is still in its early stages of development.
The only thing that limits how smart speakers can be used in a smart house system is the homeowner’s ability to imagine their home’s needs and figure out how to meet them through a combination of voice commands and apps.
Personalizing Smart Speakers To Increase Their Worth
A big part of a smart speaker’s value comes from how it can be changed to fit the user’s needs. If a smart speaker is not set up to be used in a specific way, advertising moguls can use it to gather information. But a smart speaker can be used to get the most out of a smart home system when paired with apps for smart devices.
Customizing a smart speaker’s settings and apps to fit its owner’s life is similar to how laptops and smartphones become associated with their owners as they are used. This makes the smart speaker more valuable in two ways:
- Value for the owner: A smart speaker that is used often as part of a smart home system will have a lot of practical value for the person who uses it because it will be a part of their daily life.
- Increased value for the brand: With the data collected by smart speakers, companies can work more closely with their marketing partners to target ads directly at consumers based on what they’ve bought in the past and the sounds around them. From a marketing point of view, this makes the smart speaker much more valuable to the company that made it and is using it to collect data.
Either way, a smart speaker becomes more useful when it is used often and when extra apps and software are added to it. This is because a smart speaker is a piece of technology that works best when it is connected to other devices.
Smart Speakers And Data Tracking
Aside from privacy concerns, there are benefits for both the consumer and the company when data collection is used to improve advertising.
This data collection leads to more effective advertising that is more likely to get people to buy by giving them data-driven leads. This type of targeted advertising also makes it more likely that people will see ads for products they actually need. So, the consumer’s time and attention aren’t wasted on a product they wouldn’t be interested in.
Since the information that smart speakers collect for the companies that make them is rarely used for anything more harmful than an ad, the pros of owning one outweigh the cons, unless you count the data tracking that goes on through government agencies.
Technically, companies like Google don’t have to share the information they collect unless they are required to do so by law. Still, the problem is that governments and law enforcement often ask these companies for information they have collected, but the owner of the information never knows. Google is said to give law enforcement 60–75% of the data it has collected without a fight when they ask for a digital warrant.
Overall, smart speaker companies don’t do anything bad with the data they collect. Here are some of the reasons why information is collected from smart speakers or “spied on”:
- To improve speaker-based services like better voice recognition and better recognition of regional accents and dialects through individual analysis.
- To make a map of consumer demographics and trends so that products are more in line with what people need and want.
- To study consumer psychology to find out why people buy the things they do.
The people who make smart technology don’t care about your habits, secrets, or private life. Smart data collection, on the other hand, is about finding out what people want to buy and how to make it easier for them to get what they want to buy.
Even though this might sound a little self-serving, the same processes also help companies serve the customers who depend on them, their products, and their services.
Amazon and Google don’t have much use for your personal information besides putting it together with other people’s information to help with brand marketing and digital advertising.
Smart Speakers And Cybersecurity
Almost as many people worry about data collection as worry about cybersecurity and smart speakers. Unfortunately, some of these fears are based on facts. Smart speakers use a wireless network, and wireless networks are notoriously easy to break into. Even encrypted wireless connections won’t stop a hacker with more than beginner-level skills.
The good news is that most people aren’t interesting enough to hack and record. If you’re not a spy or a government worker, the chances of a hacker breaking into your smart speaker just for fun are so low that you might as well not worry about it.
Another thing to think about is that your computer or smartphone are much more likely to be hacked than your smart speaker. This is because your computer and phone are more likely to give hackers access to your checking account information. Even though there is a small chance that your smart speaker could be hacked, that doesn’t make them less useful.
Use strong passwords, change them often, and encrypt your wireless systems to keep hackers from getting into any of your smart devices. You can also put anti-hacking and anti-virus software on your smart devices to keep them from being taken over by someone who wants to hack them.
A smart speaker is less likely to be hacked than a device with a camera or access to a lot of user information, so you shouldn’t worry about it unless you do something very illegal in your home.
Smart Ways To Use A Smart Speaker
As we’ve already talked about, the best way to make a smart speaker more valuable is to use it as a voice control module for your other smart devices. Here are some creative ways to use a smart speaker as part of a smart house system:
- With devices like the Amazon Fire Stick and a smart speaker, you can control your TV.
- With a lighting system like Philips Hue Lights, you can set up a wide range of ambient lighting that can be changed at any time with your voice.
- Set up your smart speaker to give you the weather report and your list of things to do from the night before when you wake up.
- Set reminders for yourself and add them to the calendar on your phone. Voice controls let you set reminders right away, so you don’t have to look around for a pen and paper.
- Check to see when your package will be delivered. This is a great tool for people who work from home.
- Order a pizza or a cab.
- Make or buy shopping lists.
- Listen to the radio or play trivia games.
- Record a pep talk for yourself the night before and listen to it in the morning.
These are just a few examples of how a smart speaker can make your daily life easier and more convenient. Every day, dozens of new apps and smart devices are released that help smart home products work better together so that you can use smart technology from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed.
Smart Speakers And Responsiveness
So far, the most important technical problem with smart speakers, other than privacy concerns, is how they respond to sound. Smart speakers have gotten a lot better at listening to and understanding voice commands thanks to data collection, but they are still behind when it comes to being able to understand what is being said to them.
This means that smart speakers often don’t understand what is being said to them or misinterpret what is being said. Even though these glitches only bother smart speaker users for a short time, they have kept smart speakers from becoming more common in people’s daily lives.
As the Internet of Things, AI, and smart technology continue to improve at an exponential rate, it makes sense that this part of smart speaker technology will only get better and more accurate over time. But as of 2020, the technology isn’t quite there yet when it comes to the audio input (though it grows closer by the day).
In a strange way, the same data collection that makes smart speakers work better is also the same data collection that has made people less likely to use them because of privacy concerns.
What Is The Worth Of Smart Speakers In Society?
At this point in time, smart speakers are still more of a novelty than something you have to have. Most smart technology can be run by apps on a smartphone, so you don’t need a smart speaker to use it. Also, the technology that runs smart speakers isn’t good enough yet for people to trust it as part of mainstream culture.
Smart speakers are a great way to control your smart home’s systems without having to constantly fiddle with your phone apps. This is great for people who want to stay on the cutting edge of technology or who are putting together their best makeshift smart home.
Smart speakers don’t have much to offer people who haven’t already invested in other smart devices. The value of smart speakers depends on how well they work as a voice-control hub that can talk to all of your main home systems. If you don’t already have these systems set up, a smart speaker is just a speaker that costs too much.
As the Internet of Things becomes more common in modern society and smart technology is built into more and more devices, smart speakers and other home appliances with smart technology will become more common and valuable. But for now, they aren’t much more than a pricey toy for people who like gadgets.
Wrapping Up
Smart speakers can be a good way to control and give voice commands to a smart home system for people who are willing to stick with one brand of electronics and invest in a product ecosystem for their home. But when used on their own, smart speakers lose a lot of their value. Even though the speakers can be very good, you should save your money if you only want to use them as speakers.