Alexa vs. Siri vs. Google Assistant: Which Smart Assistant Wins?

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c.gruen

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Oct 29, 2017
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"Voice Recognition standings: 1. Google Assistant/Siri (tie); 3. Alexa"

this does not reflect your findings as stated in the paragraph about voice recognition. Is Alexa trailing or Siri?
 

d.alex.connect

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Oct 29, 2017
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There are FOUR major players in this field, you missed Cortana. If you really want to consider only the top three, then you have replace Siri with Cortana.
 

ysthvf

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Oct 29, 2017
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For your convenience you used Siri on your iphone and for Google Assistant you used Google Home. Google Home is just a variant to use the Assistant and to get a complete experience you use all the devices on which Assistant is configured for a wholesome experience. Assistant is also available on Pixel and it's other Android brethren!! But nowhere I saw being mentioned about using Assistant on phone to search for maps or songs which might have also given better results for directions say.
 

kgkmkdam

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Oct 29, 2017
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I enjoyed the article. It was in-depth and very knowledgeable.

My one issue is similar to what someone else mentioned: some of the limitations you mention with Google Assistant are really only limitations with Google Home. For instance Google Home cannot send a text message but Google Assistant, on my Pixel, can. The same goes for navigating to just about anywhere you'd like to drive. Assistant does that easily on a phone via Google Maps.
 

leobeale

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Oct 29, 2017
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This whole investigation misses the point of the Google Assistant. By using only the Google Home, and not considering its capabilities on Android phones, you said it can't do things that it can. You said, for instance, that Google can't send a text. That's true on Google Home, but on a phone, where most people use it, Google most certainly can send texts. I do it all the time. It can also send WhatsApp messages, open directions in Google Maps (or even other services if you so choose), or play songs from Spotify or Google Play Music if you just bothered to literally press a button in the assistant settings menu. Doing a comparison of virtual assistants is a great idea, but it makes no sense to compare Siri's capabilities on a phone to Google's and Alexa's on their speakers, especially if you specifically knock them for not being able to do phone-related tasks. They can do them, you just ignored that. Not to mention that your mention of availability for Google Assistant is laughable: you didn't even mention Android Wear, Android TV, Android Auto, or the suprisingly large number of speakers recently released from third parties with the Assistant built in (though you did mention that Alexa was on Sonos). This is just unacceptably lazy testing to submit to the public with such confidence as to call it the state of the three services at this time: it's not even close to representative of most users' experience.
 

craigcsi

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Oct 29, 2017
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Wow.

I understand that in the age of blogging product reviews are usually more opinion than scientific - but trying to pass off this random faceoff by a single person with a very limited view of reality as a rundown of the capabilities of all of the top AI platforms and their current state is more than a stretch - it's hysterical.

As far as I can tell, you appear to rank Alexa higher than Google Assistant for what I can only imagine is the fact that you subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited but not Google Play Music, so Alexa was able to play Paint it Black. I know that can't be the reason, and yet it is literally the only thing you listed as a feature that Alexa had over Google Assistant. They appear to match everywhere else except for the fact that Google was better at playing podcasts. So... yeah.

But my absolute favorite part of this review is the how Siri was able to win both the Communications AND the Directions category because of this incredible bit of brilliance.

"Siri, though, wins the day here, by virtue of living on a phone"

Yes, technically the device you chose to test Siri on happened to be a phone. An iPhone more specifically since it doesn't work on all phones, like, you know - the other guys do.

Technically, they cannot do all of the things that Siri can do on an iPhone - but they also live on Android phones - and Fire devices where they can do many of those things as well. And despite the fact that you do mention it in other sections - you seem to have forgotten that Siri on other devices like the Apple TV, iPad and Apple watch CANNOT do all of those things.

So it would seem that Siri wins two categories simply because you decided that for those particular categories the only determining factor is that you happen to own an iPhone, and that Siri does a lot more stuff on an iPhone than the other assistants can do... on an iPhone.

Now that's what I call solid testing skills.

Congrats!
 

aseycay

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Aug 29, 2012
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This article is low-effort and low-quality and I couldn't put the reasons any more clearly than craigcsi did, so I won't.
 

philworthington

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Oct 29, 2017
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I have to agree with all the comments on how poor this article is. You really did so little research that you couldn't even be bothered to pick up an Android phone? I hope you don't get paid to write this rubbish?!
 

alexander.reiden

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Oct 29, 2017
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I also have to warn readers not to trust this review. This is poorly researched and written at best, and amateur journalism at worst. To echo what the above posters wrote, you must always test software on comparable devices and invest in equally proprietary services for each to remain objective and be taken seriously.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was quick and dirty test without the benefit of proper peer review. Here's some advice for next time (and other reviews in general):

1) You cannot call yourself a serious tech reviewer without subscribing to all the brand services and testing integration with compatible products. That means you MUST subscribe to APM, GPM, and Apple Music to be objective, and perhaps the most popular service in this category BY FAR, Spotify. Also, test Google and Alexa by syncing them with android devices, not an iPhone. Actually that doesn't even matter if you do your research, since both the Google Home and Alexda apps can be used to setup their assistant with whatever music app you want.

2) You cannot cannot cannot compare apples (home devives) to oranges (iPhones) and come up with anything but useless, biased results. Of course Siri is going to work better for making calls and texts on a phone compared to anything on a smart speaker. Why not use Google and Alexa on a phone for this test instead? They are both available on any android phone with Marshmallow or higher. Even better, dock Siri serious points for not being able to do anything without a phone while the others can do all of that on a phone, plus some of it on home devices. This will of course change when HomePod arrives.

Also, Google Home can absolutely send driving directions to any device using Google Maps with a Google account.

3) The top 3 assistants are not Siri, Alexa, and Google, at least not definitively. Cortana?
 

jacksmith21006

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Feb 6, 2016
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Use Alexa, Siri and the Google Assistant almost daily and can say this is probably the worst review I have seen of the three. I do a lot of surfing and reading online and hate being jerky online but this comparison is just really, really bad.

Google Assistant is well ahead of the other two. Alexa is better at voice recognition than Siri but requires you to memorize and use commands. Siri is much smarter than Alexa in not requiring the commands but it is not as good as recognizing your voice.

There is so much wrong with the comparison it is hard to know where to start. But the biggest is asking for specific music to play is far easier with the Google Assistant. You can use very little info and get a song to play.
 
Jun 16, 2018
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Siri is a joke if you call it Virtual assistant & I am saying this despite I had been Apple fan & using its latest products for years.
It's completely crap & this is another reason Apple is forcing atleast me to think Android for phone in next change.
 
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