Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri? The first step in choosing an AI companion is deciding which voice assistance platform is the right fit for your home. The second step is picking up one of the best smart speakers we’ve tested.
As our homes get smarter, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri have become our reliable digital helpers, living inside our devices and jumping at our spoken commands to set timers, play music, and teach kids how to spell those difficult homework words. Smart speakers are one of the easiest ways to get them running in your house. If you’re considering a voice assistance platform, you’ll have to pick a camp. The top choices don’t work very well together, and if you want to equip multiple rooms, you should stick to a single platform. This guide will explain the various options and help you choose the one that best meets your needs, along with the right smart speaker for your home. How to Talk to Your Smart Speaker Every smart speaker is summoned with a wake word, like “Alexa” for Alexa, “Hey, Google” for Google, and “Siri” for Siri. Once they start listening to you, you can ask for whatever you want. The question then is how to ask. All three voice assistants are fairly easy to talk to, but they can trip up if you don’t use the proper syntax. Alexa in particular needs to be spoken to in certain ways to get the results you want. Once you’re used to talking to Alexa and understand how to best phrase your requests it isn’t a problem, but too often the voice assistant can get confused if you use an unfamiliar term or if it’s phrased in an unfamiliar way. Google Assistant and Siri are both much better at recognizing natural language, and generally less frustrating to talk to. Amazon continues to develop Alexa and has recently begun adding its new A1Z neural processor to Echo speakers to help improve machine learning, but for now Google and Apple are easier to get along with. Amazon Echo (4th Generation) Smart Home Management Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri can control pretty much any smart home device nowadays. In the Alexa and Google apps, and with the new Siri Shortcuts feature, you can set up rooms of multiple devices to control, and set up multi-step routines, like “I’m leaving the house.
