Essential Home hub unifies all smart home hardware

Essential made a splash when it debuted a new premium smartphone from company founder Andy Rubin, who also created Android. That was not all Essential unveiled. It also has a new smart home hub that will compete with the likes of Amazon Alexa and Google Home. The device, Essential Home, is a bit different, though. The custom Ambient OS is designed to be an API for all smart home devices, even ones that run on other platforms.

It should come as no surprise that the founder of Android is a fan of open-source software. Rubin now wants to adapt his open source philosophy to the smart home and says he’s surprised no one has brought everything together yet. The smart home ecosystem is notoriously fragmented. The easiest way to get everything to work together right now is to just stick to one standard like Samsung’s SmartThings or Apple’s HomeKit. Essential Home supports all of them.

The device itself has a large circular display and responds through voice commands. It works with Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, maintaining Essential’s open ethos. This makes it like an Amazon Echo on steroids.

People will have to wait until the launch to see how it compares to other smart home hubs. The Amazon Echo Show might provide consumers with a unique value proposition that the Essential Home can’t match. If this new hub lives up to the promise of unifying different smart home devices that’s a powerful proposition.

Essential also says it safeguards user information by storing it locally whenever possible. This minimizes the data being held on cloud servers owned by companies like Google and Amazon.

The Essential Home does not have a price yet. When the product finally rolls out, though, people will know where this fits into their smart home ecosystem. If it is competitively priced with the Amazon Echo, it could be a compelling purchase for anyone who does not want to be limited in the smart home hardware options.