2017 Rewind & Top Smart Product Awards

A Year in Review: My Favorite Tech Products and Smart Assistants

I've used my Google Home device every day since I got it, and I've really enjoyed having other awesome products to review. One of my favorite products that I reviewed this year is the Jacquard by Google jacket, which is a smart jacket that you control using the cuff on your arm. It was really fun to make and use - I even took a ride on a hoverboard while wearing it and made a pretty cool video about it.

Another product I've been using a lot is my BB-8 costume, which I also reviewed this year. If you haven't seen it, you might want to check it out now. It's a really fun and unique product that's perfect for Star Wars fans.

Last but not least, let's talk about smart assistance. This is how I got started talking about Google Home in the first place. We've had a few more smart assistants come out this year, including the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot. I didn't get to review the Echo Dot as much as I would have liked, but I'll give you a brief rundown of it.

The Google Home Mini is a smaller version of the original Google Home, but it still packs a punch when it comes to features and functionality. One of my favorite things about it is its louder sound - it's definitely easier to use than some other smart speakers on the market. I also really like Google Assistant better than Amazon Alexa - it's more friendly and has more features that I love.

On the other hand, the Echo Dot is a great option if you're looking for a speaker with strong audio capabilities. It can plug into any existing speaker you have, kind of like the Chromecast Ultra, and it also comes with an auxiliary cable on the back. One thing that really stands out about the Echo Dot is its ability to do audible books - it does them really well, especially if you use Amazon Music.

One of my favorite features of the Echo Dot is its ability to read audiobooks. If you're a big fan of audible books like I am, this could be a game-changer for you. It will read your latest book or whatever you're listening to it, and it does it really well. However, I have to say that my favorite product of the entire year is actually the Google Home Mini.

I know what you're thinking - why is it my favorite? Well, here's the thing: for $50, this little device can do almost anything. It can be a phone, a speaker, a smart assistant, and even a Bluetooth speaker all rolled into one. That's just incredible, especially when you consider the price.

If there's something I'm missing, please leave it in the comments below. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic. And if you want to see more of these products, be sure to check out the link in the description below for a playlist of all my reviews from 2017. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more tech content that will help you make informed decisions when it comes to buying new gadgets.

Thanks for watching - I hope you had as much fun as I did checking out all these products and reviewing what happened in 2017.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe year 2017 may have come and gone but I can't let it leave without telling you what it did to this channel and my life as well as my favorite products of the year let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with Bret - my name is Bret and I'm here to help tech work for you and at the beginning of last year I started with 281 subscribers now one of my most successful videos started to take off I only had a few thousand views at the time that was my 101 things to ask Google home and it started to grow and I was getting really excited so I began to produce much more content well at the time I actually had a bunch of different companies reaching out to me to see if I want to review their products now in the midst of all those emails I actually had an email from Google that said hey we really liked your Google home video could we feature it on our Help Center to tell others how to use the Google home so that was the start to a really awesome year now if you go to the Google Help Center and search for some of the Google home features you will find some of my videos there as well as some other awesome creators so next I decided to take my channel to the next level so then I got some lights I improved my audio I have a blue Yeti Micah that I'm using and then I improved my camera the original camera that I was using was this Galaxy camera - pretty simple it did the job so really you can get started with anything but then I upgraded to what you are seeing now which is the Canon ATD I'm still learning how to use it you'll notice some of my videos may not be in focus but it's been an awesome experience to be able to have that to learn how to use this and how to take YouTube videos to the next level near the summer Google i/o is about to happen now this is a Android developer conference where they talk about all the new features that are going to come to the Google home well Google did a video and reviewed all the past year's videos that talked about the Google home and they actually reached out to me and asked if they could show off one of my videos now this was the videos of my kids where they're talking to the Google home they're kind of fighting and they knock over the Google home it's pretty fun but they actually features that in one of their videos which is pretty cool now during the summer I did have the opportunity to go to CVX live which is a youtuber conference here in Utah now I actually signed up to be a part of the next big YouTube competition where they took six different categories of YouTube videos and then you ran head-to-head to see if you could make it to the top by a different votes and different judges well I made it to the second place in the DIY education category which was pretty awesome so I was really excited about that but not only that at that conference I was able to meet some awesome youtubers like I met Zach from jerry-rigged everything and yes his name is Zach but I was able to sit and have lunch with him and he told me some of his YouTube secrets so hopefully that's helped me improve this channel and really I can't do it without any of you guys so thank you so much for being here at the convention I was also able to meet some other awesome youtubers that I looked up to that talk about how to build your YouTube channel I met Tim Schmoyer Roberto Blake Derral Eve's as well as Sean kennel and they had taught me so many things to help with my youtube videos later in August I actually was able to go to the Samsung unpacked event in New York City for the Galaxy Note 8 and this is the first type of event that I was able to be like like that one it was pretty epic during that time I was actually able to meet marques Brownlee from mkbhd they will actually see me briefly in his note 8 launch video you actually get a better shot of me talking with him if you check out nothing but tech 88 - note 8 video where Jacqueline shows us in the background that really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to have an experience like that there were all kinds of other youtubers around and it was pretty amazing next we're back to Google events so then Google had an event in the fall where they talked about the Google mini and the Google home acts and they reached out to me and asked if they could feature one of my videos in there where I am juggling and talking about the Google home calling feature so I'm briefly in there for a split second but that was a really exciting time now amongst all of these different events I was able to do I was able to work with some really great youtubers like Jimmy is promo Tampa tech TK Bay and a few others and I hope to do some more collaborations with them in the future so you can see some of their awesome content now I ended the year pretty strong with some awesome videos about the note 8 that took off so I'm really happy about that and then at the end of the year Google action sent me the Google home max oh thank you google I will be doing some full videos on everything that the Google home max can do as well as some full comparisons now finally at the end of the year I finished with 25,000 subscribers and I would give a huge shout out to all of you and say thank you I could not have been here without each and every one of you so thank you if you have liked shared any of that I really appreciate it over the year I've been able to create 123 different videos now I really go in-depth on a lot of the products that I have so I have multiple videos on those products but I had a really great time talking about all of these now let's start with some of the products I received over here now I received a few different speakers from anon sOooo but I had a lot of fun doing that they also sent me a few others the a touch as well as this wallet speaker right here and those were a lot of fun now I also received a Bluetooth headset right here so if we're talking about audio here I have the Cabo pro true wireless earbuds and now looking at those products some of my favorites definitely was this a 9 speaker now this was really convenient to have you could take it pretty much anywhere turn it on and it would give you great sound we actually just got a new projector I was able to plug this in and you can have sound wherever you go great battery life really awesome product and the lights make it pretty fun so that was probably my top speaker that I received but of the truly wireless earbuds these are $50 now they do sound awesome few complaints on my video about Bluetooth audio quality and I did experience that when I was mowing my lawn but overall for 50 bucks I was actually really impressed they had great sound great audio everything was well about these as well as this charging case that can recharge your phone now next let's talk about some of the smart home products so I reviewed all kind of smart home stuff and first here is the Samsung smartthings hub that I received last year now this hub at the time was 50 bucks I think you can get $100 and this allows you to connect your ZigBee and your z-wave products all in one application so there's all kinds of products you'll find on Amazon that our Wi-Fi compatible but they won't be compatible with this this essentially allows you to take strain off your Wi-Fi network and then this just controls the devices where if you go and get like 50 or a hundred different Wi-Fi smart plugs that's going to add strain to your network where this uses a different frequency to control those devices and I've really liked having one of those and it's been the hub of many of my smart home products now talking about that now we have our smart lights so there are two smart lights that I really enjoyed this year and those are the ones that are reviewed now first this is the Sangh LED light bulb now these are only ten bucks and actually reached out to saying LED for these and said hey I think your product is really awesome I want to check it out and show everybody how it works for $10 for one light bulb now you may say Bret that's an expensive light bulb well actually no if you go and look at any other LED light bulbs you may get a few for cheaper but this is a smart bulb now one of the cool things about the same LED bulbs is they are ZigBee compatible so that means I was able to pair them with my smartthings hub now since then Singh LED has actually come out with an update so you can directly connect it with the Google home so it makes it really convenient to use but when you buy this or buy it in a kit it does come with a hub so if you buy these and you want to connect a bunch of light bulbs you can connect them directly to the same LED hub and then just connect it to your Google home and you can control all those now these will turn it on and off pretty easily as well as they are dimmable so that was really awesome to have now the next light bulb is the life ex bulb so here I have a life ex bulb plugged in now these were really fun because it's really easy to control you just use the application and you can change the light bulb and adjust the brightness settings you can do all that with the Google home now these are a little more expensive these light bulbs are about fifty dollars but they do not require a hub so you don't have to have the smartthings hub or a bridge like the hue bulbs have or the same LED bulb they are just directly on the Wi-Fi and you can control them at any time and they'll connect directly to the Google home or your Alexa now this of my smart lighting products that also reviewed some other like motion lights and some deck lights but of all the lighting products that I reviewed this year this was definitely my favorite of the year really awesome the brightness was just amazing the colors at Halloween and I was able to set up a bunch of the lights around the house and I had them glow when you ask Google to get spooky it changed the color and it was really fun and from the front of the house you could see all the different colors and the windows and it was really cool so that definitely wins the smart lighting product of the year now let's move on to smart home and entertainment so here I have the chromecast I have the chromecast ultra plugged into the TV and then here we have the chromecast Audio now we actually use the chromecast devices every single day so we have one in every one of our TVs it's super nice I can use my Google home to control the chromecast devices I can ask it to play a movie or YouTube video really easily but not only that you can ask it to change the volume and play and pause if you don't want to go and grab your phone to play and pause that so the chromecast right here the regular one that has worked actually really well we use that on a TV that's only 1080p that's been very nice but here in the back we have the chromecast ultra that supports 4k and you get some really high definition as well as faster color rendering and HDR support so the chromecast ultra is probably my favorite entertainment device that I have reviewed over this year very quick very easy to use it looks really crisp and clean every time we play a movie on it it's just like wow this is definitely high quality so that is the chromecast Ultra now let's check out the chromecast Audio so this is one of the first products that I talked about this year and so you can get the chromecast Audio and it's really nice because you can plug it into any of your existing speakers it has an auxilary as well as you can get other cables like a optical cable as well as just a regular AV and then you don't have to go and buy a new speaker but then you can cast from your phone right to the chromecast Audio so it becomes a smart speaker as well which is pretty awesome so I really like that in the Audio category next let's talk about some of the smart home products that do not require a hub over here we have some smart outlets so here I have the etekcity smart outlet and then the crazy link so this bottom one the etekcity is great because it can actually monitor the power of the device that's plugged into it now they both are pretty inexpensive that's what I really liked about these compared to like a Wemo that's $35 you can get one of these for about sixteen to twenty dollars which is really great so I liked both of those I also reviewed a cooler Tron outdoor outlet that you were able to control all three of the outlets individually with your smart assistant now that was pretty cool I had a lot of fun connecting my Christmas lights to those but then the last smart home product that I reviewed over the year was the ring video doorbell Pro now this was a awesome device this is something I had never had before I'd never had a video camera in my home or any type of security but having this on the front porch makes it so convenient you can see whenever somebody rings the doorbell or even somebody just comes to your door without ringing the doorbell you can be alerted that they are there you can watch a video of them and is really convenient around Christmastime all the packages making sure that we got all those and none of them walked away now we're going to put the ring video doorbell into kind of its own category as the smart home monitoring or security system and that definitely wins we've really enjoyed that product it was so convenient to have and definitely look at getting a few more of those around the house now next let's talk about one of the biggest products that I was able to review this year now that was the phone so here I have two phones that I've talked a lot about we have the galaxy s 8 plus and we have the Galaxy Note 8 now with these phones I did tons of videos about these so I first started with the Galaxy S a plus talking about all of the things that Android can do so if you've never used Android phone I talked about how you can transfer everything over from your iPhone to a samsung phone or if you have an older samsung phone transferring it over and then how to get it all set up how to customize this and some of the awesome features that it has then later in the year I talked about the note 8 now the note series of phones is my favorite by far I've had more notes over the years than any other type of phone and I love the s-pen I love what it offers I've also loved the camera on the note 8 it really adds that awesome depth effect that you can use and hopefully we'll be able to get a full camera video up for you guys on everything that you can do but I definitely would say that the note 8 was my favorite phone of the year really excited about all the feature it had the power everything that it could do really was the perfect phone and one having the water resistance the expandable storage everything all in one device and if you're curious I do love using a spec case on my phone this is on the galaxy s 8 plus it adds that grip and then here I use the Samsung flip cover which adds some pretty cool effects right on the phone it's real quick let's talk about some of the products that I use most and I may not have them up here but let's talk about them this one first is the t9 it's a bluetooth receiver that you're able to bluetooth your phone to and then play your music on your vehicle now I don't have bluetooth in my car or anything and this has been awesome I use it everyday it's really nice that I go into the car my music will play in my stereo without having to get any expensive set up or change anything out so that's been really nice Cobble pro also sent me a power strip that I can power multiple devices and charge them up and stand them on a little stand all at once and I've used that everyday and that's been really fun to have a couple other awesome products that I was able to review and some of my favorite videos throughout the year was one this jacket which is jacquard by Google it's a smart jacket that you control right here with the cuff of the jacket that was really fun to make I got a ride on a hoverboard around and made a pretty cool video there and then I also reviewed a bb-8 costume if you haven't seen that you might want to check it out now last let's talk about smart assistance so that is how I really got started talking about the Google home well this year we have a few more smart assistants that came out right here we have the Google home mini and then we have the Amazon Alexa no I didn't get a talk much about that but I'm gonna give you a brief review on it and then here I had the Zolo mojo by Ankur this is a new Google assistant product that came out and then lastly we have the Google home max so I love the Google home but there are so many things that you can do with that tons of new features came out this year that have people have requested like the calling feature as well as the reminder feature Bluetooth all of these things have come out within this year and have been added and included on the Google home Mini the Google home acts and the original Google home so a quick comparison on Google home in E versus Amazon Alexa and I'll get a full tutorial out between the differences between these two but real quick some of my favorite things the Google home Mini definitely had a louder sound so it was easier to use I really like Google assistant better it's more friendly I really like the features that it has but some of the things that were unique to Amazon Alexa so you can plug it into any existing speaker you have kind of like the chromecast ultra it has the auxiliary cable on the back because it's sound is kind of weak but then the best thing about this is it does audible books really well and if you use Amazon music it does that really well where I don't use Amazon music but I am a big audible fan so asking it to read my latest book or whatever I'm listening to it will do that so that's definitely the one up then it has I would say over the Google home Mini but really I love the Google home menu so much more so if you are huge into audio books that's something maybe that you want to check out and then of course we have the Google home acts where this sounds awesome really enjoyed the sound of this it has the touch controls on the top so you can change the volume you can pause and play music and the zola mojo has those touch controls on the top as well now the mini did come out with an update where you can actually pause or play the music by holding down the volume on the side for a second and it will play in pause which was really convenient to have back so my final thoughts on this smart assistants definitely any of the Google assistants are my favorite I haven't got fully into the Amazon echo ecosystem but I've really loved all of the Google assistant devices now for my favorite product of the entire year now this is including you know the cost of the product the features that it has and availability to you guys I've really enjoyed all of these I love the phones but I'm going to have say that the Google home Mini is probably my favorite product of the year with it being only 50 dollars and all the things that it can do it can be a phone it can be a speaker a smart assistant a Bluetooth speaker it can be a friend all of those things all-in-one is pretty awesome for that price if you've never wanted to really talk to a smart assistant it's worth checking out because of all that it can do if there's some category or something that I'm missing I'd love for you to leave a comment below and make sure you like others comments and let the best comment go to the top so that I can see that and make sure I make more videos of that this year if you guys want to see any more of these products I'll leave a link to a playlist of all the products that I talked about this year thank you all for joining me today I hope you had as much fun as I did checking out all these products and reviewing what happened in 2017 now I wanted to give a thank you to all of you so I'm going to do a mini giveaway so if you want this make sure you check out the link in the description below and if this is your first time here I'd love to have you subscribe so that you can be notified of my new and upcoming videos about all kinds of tech that's gonna help you make you guys so much for watching we'll see you on excellentthe year 2017 may have come and gone but I can't let it leave without telling you what it did to this channel and my life as well as my favorite products of the year let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with Bret - my name is Bret and I'm here to help tech work for you and at the beginning of last year I started with 281 subscribers now one of my most successful videos started to take off I only had a few thousand views at the time that was my 101 things to ask Google home and it started to grow and I was getting really excited so I began to produce much more content well at the time I actually had a bunch of different companies reaching out to me to see if I want to review their products now in the midst of all those emails I actually had an email from Google that said hey we really liked your Google home video could we feature it on our Help Center to tell others how to use the Google home so that was the start to a really awesome year now if you go to the Google Help Center and search for some of the Google home features you will find some of my videos there as well as some other awesome creators so next I decided to take my channel to the next level so then I got some lights I improved my audio I have a blue Yeti Micah that I'm using and then I improved my camera the original camera that I was using was this Galaxy camera - pretty simple it did the job so really you can get started with anything but then I upgraded to what you are seeing now which is the Canon ATD I'm still learning how to use it you'll notice some of my videos may not be in focus but it's been an awesome experience to be able to have that to learn how to use this and how to take YouTube videos to the next level near the summer Google i/o is about to happen now this is a Android developer conference where they talk about all the new features that are going to come to the Google home well Google did a video and reviewed all the past year's videos that talked about the Google home and they actually reached out to me and asked if they could show off one of my videos now this was the videos of my kids where they're talking to the Google home they're kind of fighting and they knock over the Google home it's pretty fun but they actually features that in one of their videos which is pretty cool now during the summer I did have the opportunity to go to CVX live which is a youtuber conference here in Utah now I actually signed up to be a part of the next big YouTube competition where they took six different categories of YouTube videos and then you ran head-to-head to see if you could make it to the top by a different votes and different judges well I made it to the second place in the DIY education category which was pretty awesome so I was really excited about that but not only that at that conference I was able to meet some awesome youtubers like I met Zach from jerry-rigged everything and yes his name is Zach but I was able to sit and have lunch with him and he told me some of his YouTube secrets so hopefully that's helped me improve this channel and really I can't do it without any of you guys so thank you so much for being here at the convention I was also able to meet some other awesome youtubers that I looked up to that talk about how to build your YouTube channel I met Tim Schmoyer Roberto Blake Derral Eve's as well as Sean kennel and they had taught me so many things to help with my youtube videos later in August I actually was able to go to the Samsung unpacked event in New York City for the Galaxy Note 8 and this is the first type of event that I was able to be like like that one it was pretty epic during that time I was actually able to meet marques Brownlee from mkbhd they will actually see me briefly in his note 8 launch video you actually get a better shot of me talking with him if you check out nothing but tech 88 - note 8 video where Jacqueline shows us in the background that really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to have an experience like that there were all kinds of other youtubers around and it was pretty amazing next we're back to Google events so then Google had an event in the fall where they talked about the Google mini and the Google home acts and they reached out to me and asked if they could feature one of my videos in there where I am juggling and talking about the Google home calling feature so I'm briefly in there for a split second but that was a really exciting time now amongst all of these different events I was able to do I was able to work with some really great youtubers like Jimmy is promo Tampa tech TK Bay and a few others and I hope to do some more collaborations with them in the future so you can see some of their awesome content now I ended the year pretty strong with some awesome videos about the note 8 that took off so I'm really happy about that and then at the end of the year Google action sent me the Google home max oh thank you google I will be doing some full videos on everything that the Google home max can do as well as some full comparisons now finally at the end of the year I finished with 25,000 subscribers and I would give a huge shout out to all of you and say thank you I could not have been here without each and every one of you so thank you if you have liked shared any of that I really appreciate it over the year I've been able to create 123 different videos now I really go in-depth on a lot of the products that I have so I have multiple videos on those products but I had a really great time talking about all of these now let's start with some of the products I received over here now I received a few different speakers from anon sOooo but I had a lot of fun doing that they also sent me a few others the a touch as well as this wallet speaker right here and those were a lot of fun now I also received a Bluetooth headset right here so if we're talking about audio here I have the Cabo pro true wireless earbuds and now looking at those products some of my favorites definitely was this a 9 speaker now this was really convenient to have you could take it pretty much anywhere turn it on and it would give you great sound we actually just got a new projector I was able to plug this in and you can have sound wherever you go great battery life really awesome product and the lights make it pretty fun so that was probably my top speaker that I received but of the truly wireless earbuds these are $50 now they do sound awesome few complaints on my video about Bluetooth audio quality and I did experience that when I was mowing my lawn but overall for 50 bucks I was actually really impressed they had great sound great audio everything was well about these as well as this charging case that can recharge your phone now next let's talk about some of the smart home products so I reviewed all kind of smart home stuff and first here is the Samsung smartthings hub that I received last year now this hub at the time was 50 bucks I think you can get $100 and this allows you to connect your ZigBee and your z-wave products all in one application so there's all kinds of products you'll find on Amazon that our Wi-Fi compatible but they won't be compatible with this this essentially allows you to take strain off your Wi-Fi network and then this just controls the devices where if you go and get like 50 or a hundred different Wi-Fi smart plugs that's going to add strain to your network where this uses a different frequency to control those devices and I've really liked having one of those and it's been the hub of many of my smart home products now talking about that now we have our smart lights so there are two smart lights that I really enjoyed this year and those are the ones that are reviewed now first this is the Sangh LED light bulb now these are only ten bucks and actually reached out to saying LED for these and said hey I think your product is really awesome I want to check it out and show everybody how it works for $10 for one light bulb now you may say Bret that's an expensive light bulb well actually no if you go and look at any other LED light bulbs you may get a few for cheaper but this is a smart bulb now one of the cool things about the same LED bulbs is they are ZigBee compatible so that means I was able to pair them with my smartthings hub now since then Singh LED has actually come out with an update so you can directly connect it with the Google home so it makes it really convenient to use but when you buy this or buy it in a kit it does come with a hub so if you buy these and you want to connect a bunch of light bulbs you can connect them directly to the same LED hub and then just connect it to your Google home and you can control all those now these will turn it on and off pretty easily as well as they are dimmable so that was really awesome to have now the next light bulb is the life ex bulb so here I have a life ex bulb plugged in now these were really fun because it's really easy to control you just use the application and you can change the light bulb and adjust the brightness settings you can do all that with the Google home now these are a little more expensive these light bulbs are about fifty dollars but they do not require a hub so you don't have to have the smartthings hub or a bridge like the hue bulbs have or the same LED bulb they are just directly on the Wi-Fi and you can control them at any time and they'll connect directly to the Google home or your Alexa now this of my smart lighting products that also reviewed some other like motion lights and some deck lights but of all the lighting products that I reviewed this year this was definitely my favorite of the year really awesome the brightness was just amazing the colors at Halloween and I was able to set up a bunch of the lights around the house and I had them glow when you ask Google to get spooky it changed the color and it was really fun and from the front of the house you could see all the different colors and the windows and it was really cool so that definitely wins the smart lighting product of the year now let's move on to smart home and entertainment so here I have the chromecast I have the chromecast ultra plugged into the TV and then here we have the chromecast Audio now we actually use the chromecast devices every single day so we have one in every one of our TVs it's super nice I can use my Google home to control the chromecast devices I can ask it to play a movie or YouTube video really easily but not only that you can ask it to change the volume and play and pause if you don't want to go and grab your phone to play and pause that so the chromecast right here the regular one that has worked actually really well we use that on a TV that's only 1080p that's been very nice but here in the back we have the chromecast ultra that supports 4k and you get some really high definition as well as faster color rendering and HDR support so the chromecast ultra is probably my favorite entertainment device that I have reviewed over this year very quick very easy to use it looks really crisp and clean every time we play a movie on it it's just like wow this is definitely high quality so that is the chromecast Ultra now let's check out the chromecast Audio so this is one of the first products that I talked about this year and so you can get the chromecast Audio and it's really nice because you can plug it into any of your existing speakers it has an auxilary as well as you can get other cables like a optical cable as well as just a regular AV and then you don't have to go and buy a new speaker but then you can cast from your phone right to the chromecast Audio so it becomes a smart speaker as well which is pretty awesome so I really like that in the Audio category next let's talk about some of the smart home products that do not require a hub over here we have some smart outlets so here I have the etekcity smart outlet and then the crazy link so this bottom one the etekcity is great because it can actually monitor the power of the device that's plugged into it now they both are pretty inexpensive that's what I really liked about these compared to like a Wemo that's $35 you can get one of these for about sixteen to twenty dollars which is really great so I liked both of those I also reviewed a cooler Tron outdoor outlet that you were able to control all three of the outlets individually with your smart assistant now that was pretty cool I had a lot of fun connecting my Christmas lights to those but then the last smart home product that I reviewed over the year was the ring video doorbell Pro now this was a awesome device this is something I had never had before I'd never had a video camera in my home or any type of security but having this on the front porch makes it so convenient you can see whenever somebody rings the doorbell or even somebody just comes to your door without ringing the doorbell you can be alerted that they are there you can watch a video of them and is really convenient around Christmastime all the packages making sure that we got all those and none of them walked away now we're going to put the ring video doorbell into kind of its own category as the smart home monitoring or security system and that definitely wins we've really enjoyed that product it was so convenient to have and definitely look at getting a few more of those around the house now next let's talk about one of the biggest products that I was able to review this year now that was the phone so here I have two phones that I've talked a lot about we have the galaxy s 8 plus and we have the Galaxy Note 8 now with these phones I did tons of videos about these so I first started with the Galaxy S a plus talking about all of the things that Android can do so if you've never used Android phone I talked about how you can transfer everything over from your iPhone to a samsung phone or if you have an older samsung phone transferring it over and then how to get it all set up how to customize this and some of the awesome features that it has then later in the year I talked about the note 8 now the note series of phones is my favorite by far I've had more notes over the years than any other type of phone and I love the s-pen I love what it offers I've also loved the camera on the note 8 it really adds that awesome depth effect that you can use and hopefully we'll be able to get a full camera video up for you guys on everything that you can do but I definitely would say that the note 8 was my favorite phone of the year really excited about all the feature it had the power everything that it could do really was the perfect phone and one having the water resistance the expandable storage everything all in one device and if you're curious I do love using a spec case on my phone this is on the galaxy s 8 plus it adds that grip and then here I use the Samsung flip cover which adds some pretty cool effects right on the phone it's real quick let's talk about some of the products that I use most and I may not have them up here but let's talk about them this one first is the t9 it's a bluetooth receiver that you're able to bluetooth your phone to and then play your music on your vehicle now I don't have bluetooth in my car or anything and this has been awesome I use it everyday it's really nice that I go into the car my music will play in my stereo without having to get any expensive set up or change anything out so that's been really nice Cobble pro also sent me a power strip that I can power multiple devices and charge them up and stand them on a little stand all at once and I've used that everyday and that's been really fun to have a couple other awesome products that I was able to review and some of my favorite videos throughout the year was one this jacket which is jacquard by Google it's a smart jacket that you control right here with the cuff of the jacket that was really fun to make I got a ride on a hoverboard around and made a pretty cool video there and then I also reviewed a bb-8 costume if you haven't seen that you might want to check it out now last let's talk about smart assistance so that is how I really got started talking about the Google home well this year we have a few more smart assistants that came out right here we have the Google home mini and then we have the Amazon Alexa no I didn't get a talk much about that but I'm gonna give you a brief review on it and then here I had the Zolo mojo by Ankur this is a new Google assistant product that came out and then lastly we have the Google home max so I love the Google home but there are so many things that you can do with that tons of new features came out this year that have people have requested like the calling feature as well as the reminder feature Bluetooth all of these things have come out within this year and have been added and included on the Google home Mini the Google home acts and the original Google home so a quick comparison on Google home in E versus Amazon Alexa and I'll get a full tutorial out between the differences between these two but real quick some of my favorite things the Google home Mini definitely had a louder sound so it was easier to use I really like Google assistant better it's more friendly I really like the features that it has but some of the things that were unique to Amazon Alexa so you can plug it into any existing speaker you have kind of like the chromecast ultra it has the auxiliary cable on the back because it's sound is kind of weak but then the best thing about this is it does audible books really well and if you use Amazon music it does that really well where I don't use Amazon music but I am a big audible fan so asking it to read my latest book or whatever I'm listening to it will do that so that's definitely the one up then it has I would say over the Google home Mini but really I love the Google home menu so much more so if you are huge into audio books that's something maybe that you want to check out and then of course we have the Google home acts where this sounds awesome really enjoyed the sound of this it has the touch controls on the top so you can change the volume you can pause and play music and the zola mojo has those touch controls on the top as well now the mini did come out with an update where you can actually pause or play the music by holding down the volume on the side for a second and it will play in pause which was really convenient to have back so my final thoughts on this smart assistants definitely any of the Google assistants are my favorite I haven't got fully into the Amazon echo ecosystem but I've really loved all of the Google assistant devices now for my favorite product of the entire year now this is including you know the cost of the product the features that it has and availability to you guys I've really enjoyed all of these I love the phones but I'm going to have say that the Google home Mini is probably my favorite product of the year with it being only 50 dollars and all the things that it can do it can be a phone it can be a speaker a smart assistant a Bluetooth speaker it can be a friend all of those things all-in-one is pretty awesome for that price if you've never wanted to really talk to a smart assistant it's worth checking out because of all that it can do if there's some category or something that I'm missing I'd love for you to leave a comment below and make sure you like others comments and let the best comment go to the top so that I can see that and make sure I make more videos of that this year if you guys want to see any more of these products I'll leave a link to a playlist of all the products that I talked about this year thank you all for joining me today I hope you had as much fun as I did checking out all these products and reviewing what happened in 2017 now I wanted to give a thank you to all of you so I'm going to do a mini giveaway so if you want this make sure you check out the link in the description below and if this is your first time here I'd love to have you subscribe so that you can be notified of my new and upcoming videos about all kinds of tech that's gonna help you make you guys so much for watching we'll see you on excellent\n"