Essential Home is Andy Rubin's answer to the Amazon Echo and Google Home

Andy Rubin—also known as the father of Android—has just made his long-awaited, Essential phone official, but alongside the bezel-less smartphone, Rubin’s Essential venture is also launching a second device – a smart home speaker that’s going head-to-head with the Amazon Echo and Google Home, only this one is focused on privacy.

Called the Essential Home (what a surprise), the new device looks undoubtedly sleek, like a hybrid between the Nest and a Google Home base with a round display. It looks relatively low-profile, at least when compared to the Google Home and the Echo (not to mention the upcoming Echo Show with its massive touchscreen), but we’re a bit disappointed to report that Rubin and co didn’t showcase the Essential Home in any real-life images. Instead, what we got are sleek renders.

Anyway, let’s move on to what the Essential Home does, which is, well, what the other AI-powered home speakers are doing. You can ask it to jot down a note for you, set reminders, request songs, and all that. It can also notify you when something is “off” around the house, for example, if “a light is left on”, Essential says. Although we wouldn’t call that a good example, per se, it suggests that Essential Home will be able to work within an ecosystem of smart devices, although which ecosystem remains unclear at this point. The company says its new device is going to be a “friendly face for your home that plays well with others,” so we’d imagine it was meant to integrate well with other smart devices around the house.