Samsung unveils Galaxy Home smart speaker with Bixby assistant

Samsung showed off the Galaxy Home during the Unpacked event where it announced the Note 9. With the relatively large smart speaker, the company wants to combine good audio quality with its Bixby assistant.

The Galaxy Home rests on three legs and is about one and a half times the size of Apple’s Homepod. The smart speaker from Samsung contains six built-in speakers and a subwoofer. The audio reception is via eight microphones.

For surround playback, Samsung uses techniques developed by Harman, parent company of JBL and AKG, which were acquired in 2016. The Soundsteer feature also comes from this company. With the command “Hi Bixby, Soundsteer”, the user can have the Galaxy Home direct the audio output to the listener’s side. In addition, the speaker is compatible with Samsung’s smart home platform SmartThings and with Spotify.

Samsung’s own Bixby assistant is available for voice control and handling questions and commands. With this voice assistant, Samsung still seems to be well behind Google and Amazon in particular, both in terms of the number of users and the amount of functions.

Samsung did not give more details during the presentation. More information will follow in November during the Samsung Developer Conference.