With so many speakers and assistants to choose from, it can be a little difficult to determine which is the right one for you. Of course the easiest step in breaking it down, is narrowing your options to the two most common and popular options out there: Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant.
Both of these assistants power a handful of useful speakers you can buy for your home, allowing you to use your voice to shop, check the weather or time anywhere in the world, set a reminder, control your smart home, listen to music and thousands of other things (but you most likely already know this). Both companies have gone above and beyond to deliver a speaker that not only is fun to play with, but defines itself a purpose in your daily life.
Now, which one of these two options is the best? This of course comes down to preference more than anything, but it’s good to start with how you already operate. For example, if you are an avid Android user (Smartphones, tablets, etc) and already rely on Google Assistant as well as Google’s many other services, then a Google speaker (or speakers) would most likely be a great option for you. This is because everything can coincide with the services on your phone. Tell it to create a calendar reminder, and your Google calendar on your phone will reflect the same. Just as you’d stick with Cortana if you prefered all Microsoft services.
However, Google Assistant is still limited in certain areas, like what devices and smart hubs it can interact with vs the long list that Amazon’s Alexa can. The Vera controllers are a perfect example of this. They support Alexa just fine, but offer zero support for Google Assistant without jumping through third party hoops (ie, Vera Concierge), which can also get sketchy when it comes to Google blocking some of these options whenever they want.
When you get your hands on a smart device that doesn’t require a hub, or just about any hub, one of the most common things you will see when it comes to digital assistant support, is Amazon Alexa. Therefore if you were buying into a smart speaker for the purpose of controlling your home with your voice, Alexa might be your best option.
Now factor in our own opinions about both. We like all of the smart speakers as they are all fun and useful in their own ways. However, once again, Alexa supports a great list of applications, games, devices and so forth. Like SiriusXM, which Google continues to lack support for. Where you can walk right up to an Alexa and ask her (it, whatever) to “play Symphony Hall on SiriusXM” and you will get exactly what you asked for. We have so many of these speakers all over the place we have tested over the last few years, but of them all, we have found Alexa to succeed the most.
Also, Amazon Alexa speakers have an aux out on the back, where Google speakers do not. This has always been a big winning variable for us despite how simple it is. The aux out allows you to plug an Alexa device into any non-wireless speaker. Like an over-head system if you really want to get crazy, or simply any analog speaker or system that doesn’t support Bluetooth. This feature goes a long way and Google has yet to add it to theirs.
In the end, our conclusion was the Amazon Alexa, unless of course, you do already rely heavily on Google Assistant and services via your other mobile devices (as mentioned).
