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iHome has added the Google Assistant to the “old-fashioned” alarm clock in the iGV1.
iHome has been a pretty popular name in the world of alarm clocks/speakers, and recently it has made a turn to smart speakers, releasing the iAVS16 last year with Alexa built-in. Now at CES 2018 last week, the company announced the iGV1 which is its Google Assistant smart speaker, with alarm clock built-in. And it actually sports the same colors and materials as the Google Home, but it does do a bit more than the Google Home.
The iHome iGV1 is a alarm clock and a speaker. So on the front, you’ll see an LED display there, which is in white, with the top of the speaker also being in white. Making it a bit tough to actually read the time and such. But it is still doable. The display shows the current time, your next alarm and the speaker volume. With this speaker, you can choose to wake up to a specific alarm tone, or even to a playlist on Spotify or another music streaming service. So it’s a great alarm clock to pick up and have next to your bed. Now the top half of the iGV1 is in white and made of plastic. While the bottom half (where the speaker is) is gray and made of fabric. Giving it a bit of a Google Home look, but still rather unique. It’s a really good looking speaker and alarm clock from iHome, and arguably better looking than the Alexa model that was announced last year.
Since there is Google Assistant inside the iGV1, you are able to give it all kinds of commands, like you would a Google Home or another Google Assistant speaker. That includes asking Google to set an alarm, or asking Google to stream music from your preferred music service. there’s plenty more you can do as well, with Google Assistant, especially with routines launching soon. But it does also have Cast included, allowing you to go ahead and Cast music from your smartphone over to this speaker, or even from another device to the speaker. And if you have a Chromecast or Android TV in your home, you can use the iGV1 to stream something from Netflix, YouTube or another provider, to your TV. It is basically a Google Home with an LED display, and has better alarm functionality. It also costs $139, which is a bit expensive, compared to the normal price of a Google Home (though it has recently gone on sale for $79).
iHome won our award for the best smart home product in our Best of CES 2018 awards for a few reasons. One is the fact that it is indeed an alarm clock with Google Assistant built-in. And while many don’t use a dedicated alarm clock anymore, it is still good to have that option available for those that do use that functionality. On top of that, it was one of the better Google Assistant-powered speakers announced at the show. But the feature that perhaps put it over the top, is the USB-A port on the back for charging a device (albeit only a 1A port), it’s definitely nice to have that included here.
