who is the best voice assistant we’ve got Apple Siri versus Google Assistant versus Amazon’s Alexa versus Samsung’s Bixby and through 65 carefully selected questions, we’re going to find out who can make your life the easiest,
so let’s start the study with some math questions:
Q: what’s two plus two minus one
Q: what’s 104 + 64 times 14? too easy
Q: divide that by three
Q: now multiply that by 7
Q: convert 6 cups to milliliters
all of them got it
Q: split a bill of £69.42 between 3 people
oh, there’s another dimension to this let’s say that I’m finished with my studies, and I want to turn off my smart light bulb, I can say
Q: turn off the light,
And actually, every single one of these assistants can do this.
I bet you didn’t expect Alexa to be winning this right now,
but that was light work, so let’s get a little more complicated, let’s say you’re in your bedroom, you’re winding down for the day and you want to use your voice assistance for device control,
Q: turn off Bluetooth
Q: increase screen brightness by 20 percent
wow,
Q: change my wallpaper
Q: turn on dark mode
come on, Alexa
Q: take a selfie
hmm, oh, let’s try this
Q: take a picture in five seconds
Alexa is falling behind,
Q: how much battery do I have left
not bad; unsurprisingly, Google’s made back some ground here as device control is kind of what it’s designed for but again there is a bigger picture with these assistants, what if someone brings
your smart doorbell, while you’re in bed what I’ve done, is set up a ring doorbell outside my cat flap and on Google Assistant Bixby and Alexa, I can check up on it just by saying
Q: who’s at the door
and they will show me, oh my gosh this The guy’s too cute Siri doesn’t work with ring doorbells, um, well, instead, just serve you up, huh you tend to find that Apple is a bit more restrictive with the the brand that they’re compatible with but they do still get the point here because there are intelligent doorbells you can use all right now.
I am doing some cooking. Your phone’s on the counter
but you don’t want to touch it
because you might have greasy hands but
you still want to ask yourself,
so how good is each of these assistants at
answering internet queries:
Q: What’s the weather like today
Q: what will be the highest temperature today
Oh, I like this one
Q: what will the weather be like on Tuesday next week
Q: Should I take an umbrella with me today
love that.
Q: What song is this hmm [Music]
honestly, horrific, okay, but what if I want to set the kettle to boil without touching it well the way you would do that to have a smart plug that you can turn on and off remotely and then a specific Kettle that allows you to hold the boil button on so that as soon as that plug is remotely activated, it will go straight into boiling the water, and it turns out that every single one of these assistants is able to control Smart plugs like this so one point to all of them.
Okay, let’s delve deeper into the internet queries
Q: How old is Rick Astley
that’s smart;
Q: how many number-one songs does he have
Q: is he playing any concerts in the near future
okay
let’s try a different act
Q: When is the next Avengers movie due to be released
Q: what’s it called
Q: Will Spider-Man be in it
Q: show me paintings by Monet
Q: Which style of painting was he famous for
yikes,
Q: show me a recipe for passion fruit pie
but what if I have guests over to eat a Big Slice of my passion fruit pie what if I want to set the mood, I’m going to need some smooth jazz music, of course,
so Siri Google and Alexa all have accompanying intelligent speakers, and because these are Wi-Fi speakers your assistant will be able to locate them within your house and automatically start playing your smooth jazz through them.
Bixby doesn’t have its smart speaker, so the only way to play your Audio out loud is to connect to one via Bluetooth, but that’s not nearly as seamless, so it’s not getting that point.
poor Bixby,
but we can get tougher by testing now how much control each one of these assistants can exert
over third-party apps.
Q: open the app store
Q: set the alarm for 7 AM
just bear in mind for Alexa that sometimes even when it is actually correctly executing a command, it doesn’t always show you that on-screen.
Q: show me my photos from 2021
Q: Which of them were taken in the United States
Q: which they had dogs in them
ouch
Q: how far is it from Sicily to Rome
Q: Can you give me the directions
nice Google
Q: play a video on YouTube
oh yes
this is a tough one
Q: play Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix
hot take: stranger things is overrated
Q: send a tweet
now also while we’re in this room, I’ve got my smart vacuum cleaner so let’s see if we can put it to work, that vacuum up the kitchen please the kitchen is on the other side of the house from here so I’ll be pretty impressed if it understands a command that specific and can navigate to the kitchen to clean and it turns out it does on Google Assistant Bixby and Alexa, that’s incredible
Siri doesn’t though you can use it to start vacuuming, it doesn’t understand anything beyond that.
and now for some of the most advanced app commands:
Q: send an email to Mrs. Hughes, the boss
no way
Q: Search eBay for Nintendo GameCube
Q: translates the following: Nunca voy a renunciar a ti
okay, you can probably blame my language speaking
for that,
Q: Could you read this article for me?
Q: send this to Mom
yes, Google
Q: what can I do here
Q: create a new contact, new dad
Q: message them to say hello
oh,
Q: Can you switch from voice input to keyboard input
Q: add a laughing crying emoji foreign
Q: Hang up the phone
Now, what about the human factor? Because it’s one thing to have an intelligent assistant, but I would say it’s just as important how naturally they can interact with a human user.
Q: what’s my name
Q: that’s not actually how you pronounce it
Q: call me boss man instead
thank you
Q: Can you cheer me up
Q: tell me a joke
Q: tell me a dad joke
Q: remember that my keys are under the mat
okay
Q: forget everything I told you today
And finally, the most challenging category of them all routines, every single one of these assistants also have the option to execute a whole series of actions when you give them a single command. You can create routines that activate based on where you are like, for example, I’ve set
one up that
Q: detects whether I’m home past 5 PM
and if I am, it will say welcome home it’ll turn the lights on. It’ll even turn the kettle on, and shockingly, this works on both Google and Siri, I’m impressed
one point to each one of the other things I wanted to test was a routine that
Q: detect when I am in my car and when you connect your phone via Bluetooth and then open up all the apps that you want to use on it and only Bixby can do this one where it starts playing my driving music the playlist opens ways for traffic detection turns on do not disturb on my phone and then asks me where we are going that is awesome.
For number 63, I wanted to use dismissing my alarm as a trigger to be able to open news because
first thing in the morning when I get out of bed, it would be so cool to be able to immediately be on the news and see what’s happening in the world and this works on all four of plus
, you can take it further by also, activating a morning routine just by saying good morning to each of these. But Bixby is genuinely the hidden MVP when it comes to routines. I realized it can go as complex as managing your bad habits, it can detect if a game that you’re addicted to, for example, is, being played between certain times on specific days and it can use that input to trigger the alarm, Bells can make my light red it can close the app and deactivate my Wi-Fi .
And with that said the final scoreboard is
Google:52
Siri:43
Bixby:42
Alexa:30
so the winner of the best voice assistant battle is:
Google Assistant
Congratulations, Google, you are the best voice assistant.
Tell me in the comments how the article was and who you thought was the winner.
Image Soure: @Mrwhostheboss