Google Home, Google's home assistant and rival to the Amazon Echo, is coming to the UK from 6 April.

The release date and price were unveiled at an event in London on Tuesday 28 March, where it was also revealed the British edition will offer news briefings from a number of UK partners. These include the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Sun.

Home has been available in the US since October 2015 and has been extremely popular over there.

It works in a similar way to Amazon Echo - which has been available in the UK since September 2015 - by acting as a control centre for your entire home. You can use it to control a wide range of smarthome products, such as lighting and thermostats; playback music, with support for Google Cast; and ask it any number of questions with results delivered direct from Google's search engine.

Baked into Google Home is Google Assistant, Google's new Siri-like voice assistant that can hold conversations with you and understand follow up questions in context. For example, if you ask "what films are playing tonight?", it will be able to tell you listings at your local cinema, tell Assistant you want to take the kids, and it will reply with films that are child-appropriate. 

Other features of Google Home include a built-in speaker and interchangeable bases to change the colour and textured finish. 

Google Home will cost £129 when it hits these shores at the beginning of next month.