JBL Link View Speaker

JBL Link View Speaker

JBL is a speaker maker, and the Link View’s speakers are right up front. The pill-shaped device has a flat front that is slightly tilted and a rounded back with a speaker on either side of the screen. There’s a slider button on the back that lets you put a physical shutter over the five-megapixel camera above the LCD screen. Another toggle below that switches off the microphone. You can use both to make calls via Google Duo or use the device to make regular phone calls, too.

The Google Assistant experience is the same across all manufacturers’ devices, and there are a few quirks to get used to. They all seem to be straddling this divide between tablets and smart speakers. Its voice-activation features are very similar to the Google Home, but the screen does add a few complications. If you want to watch a video, you’ll often have to specify, via voice command, that you want Google to play it on YouTube. There’s no search bar, but you can scroll through different screens with suggestions for how to look up recipes, play games, and hear the news. Swiping left takes you back to a screen while swiping up brings up a few device settings, such as screen brightness. If you ask Google to turn off the screen, it goes black but still displays the clock.

When you use the wake words “Hey, Google” or “OK, Google,” a white bar appears at the top of the screen, and you’ll see what the Link View hears you saying. It’s usually pretty accurate. We did have a couple of mix-ups with some of the games we played, like Mad Libs. It asked for an adjective, and we said chilly. It displayed Chile, which our fourth-grade teacher would have told you is a noun. Mad Libs is a good example of a skill that isn’t making use of the JBL’s screen. It simply displayed a logo instead of letting us read along with the story.

Recipes, on the other hand, are far easier to follow with some visual cues. Sometimes with Google Home, something that should be simple — like a recipe for roasting asparagus — becomes an ordeal as the speaker reads through 12 steps to tell you to cook it for eight to 10 minutes. With the screen, you can do a quick scroll, if your hands are clean enough. The same is true for Spotify playlists, which the Link View displays in a scrollable list when you ask Google to show them to you.

There are other little conveniences, like being able to see several days’ worth of weather when you ask for the forecast, being able to see the star rating of nearby restaurants at a glance, and being able to see how many minutes are left on a timer without having to ask.