The Google Home speaker is a home speaker/assistant that plays music, organises your life, answers your questions and more – kinda exactly like Amazon Echo.

With Google launching a home speaker they’re taking on rival tech giant and current leader of home speakers, Amazon. The Amazon Echo has been available for over a year now so if Google plan to take the market they’re going to have to one up Amazon, which they already have done with pricing.

At $129 Google Home is $50 cheaper than the Amazon Echo but it needs quality to truly compete. When we first reported on Google Home it boasted strong audio quality that is “ready to fill the room” with “strong bass and clear highs”. The Google Home also has Cast connectivity so you can connect it to Chromecasts for a multi-speaker experience. As audio quality is one of the Echo’s most critiqued elements Google already have the upper hand.

The built-in voice activated AI is an upgraded version of Google Now so you have the entire web at your fingertips behind a clever virtual assistant. It can also tap into Google for weather forecasts, real time traffic info, and mostly anything you could want an answer to. Whether it’s AI will beat Amazon’s Alexa will have to be seen when it releases in November but I would expect a similar experience from both.

It will have to be seen how successful Google Home is in the face of Amazon Echo’s established brand but with a lower price point and better sound quality Google have a good chance of competing alongside, if not surpassing, Amazon. However with Apple reportedly building another home speaker powered by Siri, Google may not be the biggest threat to Amazon in the home speaker business.

Google Home speakers will be shipped in November. Google Home is available for pre-order now for $129.