- [Marques] What's your name?
- [Siri] I'm Siri, pleased to meet you.
- [Google] My nickname is the Google Assistant.
- [Bixby] The name is Bixby.
- [Alexa] I'm Alexa.
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- I've talked and made jokes in the past
mostly along the lines of Google Assistant is clearly
the best virtual assistant and then Bixby, Siri
and Alexa are various levels of far behind.
But last time I did this type of test was 2017
so I figured we should revisit this a little bit,
retest things and figure out
if Google Assistant still actually is
the best virtual assistant on a smartphone right now.
Also shout out to Clippy, the original virtual assistant
whose ugly Christmas sweater for Microsoft
is actually what inspired this one, the MKBHD 8-bit Drip
which you can get wall supplies last.
They're very limited
but they're at shop.mkbd.com, link below.
But I decided to start with the simple questions.
You know The three things that you ask from an assistant
the most often I think are the weather, timers and facts.
So they all do fine with the weather question,
probably the number one query for me anyway.
And then for the most part,
they were also the same pretty quick
with just asking standard facts,
although for some reason they did disagree
on the height of one person.
But then for timers, for timers, for one weird reason
Siri cannot do multiple timers at the same time
on the iPhone.
If you have a timer running and ask for a second timer,
it asks you every time if you want to replace
the first timer.
Pretty basic stuff
that I'm not sure why Apple hasn't fixed yet.
Especially because you can set multiple timers
at the same time with Siri on a HomePod mini.
But anyway, I don't wanna make you watch
a whole bunch of back to back to back questions and answers
because I admit it was kinda boring when I was doing
all of that testing but I'm going to share some examples
of what I found with you and then some of the highlights
of the testing and the way it answers these questions
when you interact with them.
So here we go.
So with all the latest software updates on every assistant,
all being asked the exact same questions,
asked to do the exact same tasks with the same phrasing
and on the same WiFi connections,
most often the fastest one to answer
was Google Assistant or Siri.
But, but Siri and Bixby, in my experience,
did have the most instances of like hanging
and pausing and not really answering a question.
Kinda like acting like they had a poor internet connection
even though they didn't.
Not sure why they did that.
A restart of the phone helped with the Bixby one.
Siri just kinda does it randomly,
not sure why but that's a real fact.
But then with straight up fact questions,
there is no runaway winner
which I think is a good thing actually.
So if you ask something that's easily Googleable
or on Wikipedia, something like how tall is the Taj Mahal?
They can all get it.
Or if you ask, what do whales eat?
They all had some type of answer for me
that was basically the same.
Siri I found relies the most heavily on Wikipedia
as a source for almost all of its answers.
And then when it does have to go outside of that,
it just kinda throws up a web search link
often with Wikipedia at the top,
says, "Look what I Googled for you."
Now Google Assistant is the most likely to give you
a nice visual and slightly more information
than you asked for.
Bixby is powered by Google
so I would say it's the most likely to read
what Google assistant reads word for word.
And then Alexa is the most likely to throw in
some extra information about your latest Amazon order
or something random.
So facts, they can all do, great.
Then there is what I'd call the device control category
because these are assistants that are on your smartphones,
they're smart speakers as well but on your phone,
you'd like to be able to help you out with things
while you can't use your hands.
And for this, there was a runaway winner, actually two
and that would be Google Assistant and Bixby.
So with the most basic, basic stuff,
they're pretty much all fine.
They can all change their screen brightness, for example,
except Alexa.
But they can also all open the camera
or pretty much any app on your phone with a voice command.
That's easy.
Setting an alarm is light work.
If you ask it actually to open the app store,
they all open their respective app stores
and actually Bixby opens the Samsung Galaxy Store
which is kinda cheeky.
But when it starts to get more complex,
Google and Bixby start to walk away from the others.
So if I ask it to take a selfie,
Siri and Alexa will just open the camera
but Bixby and Google actually open the camera,
switch to the selfie camera
and start a self-timer and actually take a selfie.
If I wanna say play "Squid game" on Netflix,
both Google and Bixby will actually open the Netflix app,
find the first episode of "Squid Game" I haven't seen yet
or wherever I left off and start playing it.
Siri just opens the app and Alexa is lost.
If I say start a voice recording or a voice memo for Siri,
again, Google and Bixby open the voice recording app
and actually start that recording.
Siri again just opens the app.
And again, Alexa is lost.
These voice commands when they work are legitimately faster
than I would've been able to do it by hand
for the most part.
And there's a bunch of other device specific stuff
that Samsung has programmed into Bixby where it can reach
into apps and perform specific commands within them.
So if there are apps who use a lot,
this can potentially save you a lot of time.
Bixby was also great at this last time I did it
and also Alexa is unsurprisingly the worst at device control
because they aren't making their own phone.
These aren't Amazon phones.
So the vertical integration's great with Siri
and Google Assistant and Bixby, not with Alexa,
not a shocker there.
What might be a little bit of a surprise though
is conversationalism.
Who is the coach of the Phoenix Sons?
Huh, how tall is he?
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Did he play in the NBA?
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What team did he play for?
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So you can see, Siri tapped out
after about four questions in a row about the same thing
but Google Assistant is incredible at this.
It's really, really good at remembering the context
and the subject of a natural conversation
and carrying that on through a bunch of questions in a row.
Where is the Taj Mahal?
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Okay, how tall is it?
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How many meters is that?
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What is it made of?
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See, again, Google remembers what we're talking about.
When is the Weeknd's birthday?
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What's their latest album?
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What's his real name?
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So basically, if you're asking a bunch of questions in a row
or if you have one subject that you want
to basically research through the voice assistant
or get a bunch of answers on,
your best bet is definitely Google Assistant.
And then one more interesting thing from the crew
is that I ask just as far as getting pictures.
When you ask for pictures of something
like dogs for example, they can all search the web
except Bixby didn't.
And Alexa, which is looking for an Amazon Photos app
for some reason.
But when you say, show me my pictures of dogs,
Google actually opens and searches in my own Photos album
for my own pictures of dogs.
So I did a bunch of other testing like this
with a bunch of other different questions,
different styles of questions,
follow up questions and things like that
and I've come to a pretty solid conclusion.
So if you're wondering which one is the best;
"Marques, you did all these tests,
"which one came out as number one?"
Only one thing became exceptionally clear
through all this testing which is that Alexa
is clearly the worst, is clearly far behind the others
as a smart assistant on a phone.
I mean, unless maybe you're already deep
in the Amazon Alexa ecosystem
with everything working perfectly in your smart home.
Matter of fact, this really is an ecosystem question
almost as much as it is a skills question
for the assistants.
Because if you are super all in
on one of these smart home ecosystems,
that actually could answer the question for you.
Of course, if you're all in with HomeKit,
then Siri and then iPhone is your only option
to view your cameras and see your doorbell ringing
and turn on your lights and all that stuff.
But if you are doing the same with Google Home
and Google Assistant, then you're there.
Now the next Gen Matter standard may change all of this.
It may actually make this section irrelevant,
maybe leave the thumbs up on this video or comment
if you're interested in a video about that specifically.
But for now, with these different silos of home ecosystems,
that's pretty important.
But I'll still say from my most common experiences
and queries and the things that are most useful;
across every single phone, iPhones or Android phones,
the most useful assistant is still Google Assistant.
And that's multiplied if you also happen to have
a pixel phone because then you also get call screening
and Hold for Me and all those extra pixel features.
But in general, Google Assistant is most likely to be fast.
It's most likely to give a good well sourced answer.
It's most likely to be conversational
and remember context longer.
And it has a bunch of third party plugs,
tons of app support.
And I also happen to have built my smart home
in the Google Home world so it's great.
Now for the second best, I'm very tempted to say Bixby.
Of course though, this is only relevant
if you have a Samsung phone.
And also, it is basically saying all the same
first query responses that Google assistant was
minus the ability to talk to a smart speaker
since Samsung would probably like us to forget about that.
But I am gonna have to put Siri in second place here.
It's fine, it's okay
it's all right, it's fine, it's not great
but it is the most well plugged into Apple's ecosystem.
So of course, if you're doing HomeKit stuff,
it's gonna work well there.
It does support a smart speaker which can do multiple timers
if you're not doing stuff all the time on your phone.
And it does support routines
which is like stacking a bunch of different commands
into one action if you're willing to dig through
the very convoluted Siri shortcuts interface.
So that puts Bixby in third place and Alexa is just bad,
it's just bad on a phone.
Like there was a phone a couple years ago,
an HTC phone where it was built in
so there was Google Assistant and Alexa side by side
on the same phone and it worked kinda well back then
but that was years ago and Alexa is just dead last
on a phone right now and Amazon knows it.
Amazon is falling behind with Alexa
and if you're just starting to use assistants
or put together a smart home or this type of stuff,
I would say avoid things that are Alexa exclusive right now.
But until then, let me know if you agree
that Google Assistant still seems pretty far out in front
or maybe there are some specific features that you find
the most useful in a virtual assistant.
Let me know in the comments.
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Thanks for watching and I'll catch you guys in the next one.
Peace.
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