Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen i'm joe hindi from android authority comm and the flavor of the year has been personal assistance in this shootout we're going to compare five of the most popular personal assistants including Google Assistant Bixby Cortana Alexa and Siri okay let's start with the very basics all five of these personal assistants have a lot in common you can access them with the press of a button most of them are built into their various operating systems they all can fetch information and do web searches they also all have base apps or dedicated homescreen pages that allow additional info like weather news reminders and other stuff as well as settings the basic experience is very similar between all five personal assistants that said there are some things that you need to know each assistant works best with its individual ecosystem Google assistant works best with Google Apps chromecast Google home and all of that jazz Alexa works best with fire tablets Amazon streaming services fire sticks and the echo devices you get where I'm going with this choosing a personal assistant generally means that you're also choosing the apps and devices that they support as well thus I can probably save you a bunch of time if you're firmly ensconced in an ecosystem your best bet is to just stick with the assistant that works best with that ecosystem Siri doesn't work well with Gmail Cortana doesn't play well with YouTube Google assistant works well with a variety of features but you still get the best results with Google Play Music or Google keep that's just the way it is for right now so let's get right to the questions I'm going to make this really quick and simple because you don't have all day and neither do i if at any point you see an assistant open a web search or simply not complete the command they have failed that round the assistants should be able to complete all of these commands with something other than a web search we also tested each of these assistants on their home turf and that's why you'll see Cortana being tested on a laptop additionally I'm not great at recording device audio I apologize in advance if it sounds a little worse than usual okay let's get started okay let's start with some basic easy questions these were the challenging questions like four years ago and they definitely aren't any more there is no excuse for an assistant app to not be able to complete these ok assistant what's the weather right now looks like it's a cloudy day when the temperature of 61 right now in Columbus at 61 and cloudy today it'll be partly cloudy with a forecasted high of 73 and a low of 51 it's 61 degrees with cloudy skies today you can look for partly sunny weather with a high of 75 degrees and a low of 53 degrees okay here's the weather for today the forecast shows mostly sunny skies with a high of 71 and a low of 53 okay assistant what was the score of the last Browns game the Browns most recent game was against the Giants the score was 10 to 6 Browns but one day the Browns beat the Giants 10 to 6 he'll play tomorrow and 7:30 p.m. away against the book of year the Browns narrowly defeated the Giants by his fourth 10 to 6 last Monday on Monday the brown squeaked by the Giants 10 to 6 okay assistant tell me a joke we're just spiders go on the internet their favorite web site okay here you go why do fish live in saltwater because pepper water makes them a sneeze why is Candice light-colored you've got to keep it within the lines I don't think you'd understand a joke in my language they're not so funny anyway why with the calendar nervous its days were numbered okay assistant when is the next solar eclipse according to earth sky you can see that after the August 21st 2017 eclipse the next total eclipse for North America will come on April 8th 2024 it will happen February 15th 2018 according to community members on April 8th 2024 a total solar oops well once again across the country it will come up from Mexico through Texas and on to New York and Maine finally leaving land in Newfoundland okay assistant when is the next showing of spider-man homecoming on the web the next few showings of spider-man homecoming at Marcos cross would cinema are at 10 a.m. 105 p.m. and for 10 p.m. it's also showing it rave cinemas Polaris 18 plus extreme in AMC East and Towne Center 30 with dine in theaters and IMAX here are a few theaters playing spider me today I found spider-man homecoming a bit far from you all five assistants performed very well you will almost always find what you are looking for Bixby appeared to struggle with direct commands unless you feed at the proper context however if a question doesn't work on big speed you can actually order to open Google search and perform the exact same search there thus piggybacking on Google's excellent responses it's a cheap workaround but it does work we also got two different answers for the Eclipse question but technically neither of them are wrong the next one in the u.s. is in 2024 while the next one in the entire world is in 2018 this is a wash because 2024 answers were correct in the context that I live in the United States and the assistants assumed that's the one I wanted to know however the 2018 date is actually the factually accurate answer you can always specify more to get the most accurate answers these commands are all simple tasks that you shouldn't have any trouble completing generally speaking these are native commands that require either no third-party apps to complete or very obvious nearly ubiquitous third-party apps that they all should have support for okay assistant set a reminder to pick up milk from the store when do you want to be reminded tomorrow at noon okay do you want to save this yes okay reminder saved reminders are not currently supported on this device okay I'll remind you got it okay assistant play Pink Floyd's time on YouTube here you go here's what I have here are some videos of time by Pink Floyd I found on the web sorry I can't play music on YouTube okay assistant open up the web browser your silk sure thing opening Google Chrome okay assistant what's on my calendar sure thing here's your calendar here are the events you requested first up you have a calendar entry on August 30th at 12:00 p.m. the title is paid a hero the next four events on Wednesday August 30th at 12:00 p.m. there's pay day on Monday September 4th there's Labor Day which lasts all day on Wednesday September 6 and 12:00 p.m. there's payment removed from bank today and on Wednesday September 20th there's mom's birthday which lasts all day ok I found at least 25 appointments sure I can help you find something on the calendar here's your schedule for today ok assistant show me directions from Cleveland Ohio to Las Vegas Nevada alright it looks like the distance is 2074 miles on your trip we'll tape around one day six hours by car you can say start to begin the navigation alright the best way to get from Cleveland to Las Vegas by car is via i-80 west and will take about one day in six hours in light traffic the fastest route to Las Vegas takes about 31 hours 48 minutes via i-70 and i-15 getting directions from Cleveland to Las Vegas sure getting you directions to Las Vegas Nevada overall none of the assistants did overly bad alexis saw some struggles including a lack of support for youtube which is the world's most popular video streaming service Alexa does have YouTube support on devices like echo though other than that all five devices perform admirably YouTube support is surprisingly not great Bixby and Google assistant had no troubles but the other three did and I can't really explain why everybody uses YouTube and not having support is just a little bit silly Bixby Google assistant and Siri do get some extra credit for being able to complete multiple tasks at once they were able to do things like open web browsers to a specific web address where as the other two could not the only assistant that didn't struggle in at least one category to some extent was Google assistant our final set of questions represent hard mode these are complex tasks that almost certainly require third party integration of some type this is the bleeding edge of what these assistants can accomplish and this is also the functionality that's going to expand the most over the next couple of years okay assistant turn my lights on sure turning the bookshelf on okay okay the bookshelf is on I'm sorry for the quality of the audio my setup is upstairs filming the result of this assuming it works so this is an Xbox one there you go see Xbox there's my gamertag and all that so I'm relatively certain I can make philips hue lights turn on using Cortana on the Xbox one so here we go hey Cortana turn on lights okay there are two small Corrections here big speed does actually work with Philips hue lights however you have to order this fifty dollar Samsung smartthings hub in order to do so it's simply not worth it if you have only a couple of smart home things and it kind of sucks that samsung put something like this behind a paywall additionally Cortana does not have native support for philips hue I used a third-party application called hue TRO which just so happened to work on both the Xbox one and Windows 10 okay assistant track my next run starting running please visit Amazon to track or manage your orders I'll need to access your intervals data to do that it ok I started your work work ok assistant called me an uber destination let's check the details and request for a ride uber isn't supported on this device there is an uber at 7 minutes away from your Alexa address should I order it no thank you have a nice day what type of ride you want Boober X uber can get you an uber X in seven minutes do you want to request it no thank you okay I won't request it okay assistant order me a pizza I found a few places within eight point nine miles dude like to place your easy order reorder your most recent order or start a new order start a new order great let's get started is this order for delivery or carryout carryout Thanks you can tell me what you'd like to order or I can tell you about our menu what would you like one large pepperoni pizza what type of crust do you want you can choose hand-tossed crunchy thin crust or Oakland style Brooklyn style your order contains one pizza the total is $14.49 would you like to review your order details or are you ready to checkout checkout by placing this order you agree to our terms of use available on Domino's calm your order should be ready for pickup in about 13 to 18 minutes do you want me to place the order no thank you you're welcome please tell me if there is anything else I can help you with I found 15 pizzeria restaurants tap the one you're looking for okay assistant download an app for me opening Play Store here's what I found okay searching for Wunderlist on the App Store this one is tough because a lot of these require complicated setups or have other limitations for instance Siri can't order a pizza but only in certain parts of the world Google assistant can hail an uber and order pizza but only on Google's home we wanted to show that these difficult tasks could be done but also that this is the bleeding edge and you won't always have access to these features functionality is generally unstable or incomplete but promising on all five assistants to some extent Cortana can turn on philips hue lights on Xbox one even if I had to cut out the eight failed attempts to due to instability it's a real pain that Siri and Google assistant could have done better if their feature rollout were more consistent in respect to region and device overall Alexa performed the best in this category failing and only one question and it Excel despite being used on a cheap underpowered POS tablets alright folks you've hung in there this long it's time to decide a winner and get on with our day Google assistant is exceptional at context one of the drawbacks of most other personal assistant apps is that you have to get the command just right in order to complete the task Google assistant is very good at figuring out what you need even if you ask it do the same thing in two entirely different ways however we are vastly disappointed that Google home gets all of the fun features like casting video ordering pizza hailing uber and other stuff while their devices don't it's the best all-around pick even if we have to wait for those awesome features to be available on our phones Amazon Alexa is probably the most customizable assistant here it doesn't do much out of the box but you can install these things called skills that increase functionality dramatically I had to install several of these skills over the course of the making of this video and most of them worked really well additionally Alexa excels at gathering information through conversation in order to complete a task like ordering a pizza when it comes to pure functionality Alexa can do more than all of the other personal assistants and Alexa enable devices work exceptionally well with one another it just sucks that so few devices habits and that Amazon's Android experience is vastly inferior to Google's Android experience but Alexa did Pizza and none of the other ones did so kudos to Alexa Siri did surprisingly well during every round of this test Apple has been doing well with keeping Siri competitive with everybody else and Siri feels like a solid option it also has exceptional backwards compatibility I perform this test on a first-generation iPad air and I know it did just as well as the latest iPhone would have done considering that the pixel excel on android oreo doesn't even do as well as google's home device I got to give Apple credit for delivering consistency between older and newer devices Siri may not be the best choice but it is a safe choice especially if you're stuck on an older Apple device that still gets consistently updated you're not going to be disappointed unless you need something it specifically can't do Cortana's biggest strength is being available freakin everywhere like Starbucks or political dissonance iOS Android Windows 10 and Xbox one means that it's available on more devices than every other personal assistant and it's not a close measurement you can't get any other personal assistant application on your phone your computer and your gaming system at the same time it's accessible to third-party developers although that potential is almost wholly untapped it's quickly falling behind when it comes to third-party integration and more advanced tasks Cortana has more potential than any assistant here however Microsoft really needs to step up their game a lot because their assistant is kidding rekt right now and that brings us to the wild card with Bixby Bixby did a surprisingly good job during testing and where it excels the most is feeling like an actual personal assistant when it performs tasks it has the ability to emulate screen taps like an actual freaking person and that lets it interact with on-screen elements better than any other assistant its unrivaled for boring mundane tasks like rotating images in your gallery downloading apps cleaning out your browser history and a lot more it's really too bad that you could only have this on a few devices and that it's home automation features are stuck behind a 50-dollar proprietary Samsung hub it still needs a lot of work though especially in his tertiary features such as big speed vision it's better than Cortana and at least as good as Siri of course we'd love to hear what you think as well drop a comment and let us know which one you use and why and that about does it for this one folks don't forget to subscribe to Android Authority and ring the bell to get the latest android authority videos as soon as they're released thanks again for watching everybody and have a wonderful day