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After Christian received his Bachelor's Degree of Science in Music Technology, he moved to California, winding up in the San Francisco Bay Area — right next door to the Silicon Valley. Since then, his writing has appeared in Digital Trends, TechRadar, Reviewed, and more. You can read our full guide to the best smart speakers here to learn more about how they work and the privacy concerns many people have with them. The Google Home Mini is compatible with Google Chromecast for hands-free video streaming and Android for hands-free calendar event creation, making lists with Google Keep, setting reminders and more. In fact, if you already have these devices, the Google hub will automatically seek them out as soon as you sync it to your home’s WiFi network.
If you don't, then Alexa will do the job perfectly well for your needs. Google is also slightly better with accents and languages, so if you live in a multi-lingual household, Google might be your winner. If you're using the Google Home, you'll plug the speaker in, download the Google Home app, and the device should automatically pop up in the app.
Is Alexa better than Google?
We line up the hardware, software and privacy of each smart speaker for comparison. Want to learn about retirement planning from some of the nation's top experts? Join TheStreet's Robert "Mr. Retirement" Powell live in New York on April 6 for our Retirement Strategies Symposium.
In general, smart displays can do everything smart speakers can do and more, but smart speakers cost less and respond to all of the same voice commands. Picking the right one comes down to how much use you'll get out of the screen. The best smart speaker for you ultimately depends on what you plan to use it for.
Google Home— $60 off
PCMag supports Group Black and its mission to increase greater diversity in media voices and media ownerships. Google Assistant doesn't have nearly as many third-party plug-ins, but it's much easier to talk to. It can understand different requests more easily than Alexa, and that's very appealing. The smartest thing to do is to try both and see which fits better with your lifestyle. There's no right or wrong approach really – Google's is simpler, but Alexa's encourages faster and broader development and support from third-parties.
Alexa has an edge with third-party functionality, thanks to thousands of different skills that can do everything from order pizza to read a bedtime story. It tends to require very specific syntax, though, especially when activating and using most of those skills. It makes Alexa a bit hard to talk to unless you get used to phrasing requests how Alexa wants to receive them. With a simple, “OK, Google” or “Hello Google,” you can access a variety of tasks and services through commands to the Google Assistant . Shop your favorite products and we’ll find the best deal with a single click. Users who made the irreversible change weren't happy to realize that they couldn't connect with popular third-party services like IFTTT any longer, which left Google scrambling to clean up the mess.
Amazon Echo Dot With Clock (4th Gen) Review
You can control your devices with a touch and get a handy overview. Your significant other now doesn't need to remember what you set up and what you named each device, they can just check the smart display. They can both control most mainstream smart home devices, can both find information from the web, connect to music streaming services, and so on. The whole point of these devices is that you can interact with them with your voice – so it makes sense that the voice recognition will need to be pretty good. The majority of the time, they'll all pick up what you’re saying and understand what they need to do – provided you know how to interact with them. Both Alexa and Google Assistant use their respective screens to great effect in the kitchen.
All that tech for just $50 won it our Editors' Choice award. Of course, you can connect Alexa to third-party services, too, and Alexa may even have the edge on Google when it comes to smart home connectivity, though both can connect to all major smart home devices. First, the devices that are compatible with all three ecosystems.
However, having to use your phone to control the music defeats the purpose of owning a voice-controlled speaker in the first place. Besides, you can get a much better-sounding Bluetooth speaker for that price. Signe Brewster has spent the past seven years writing about emerging technology, including the evolution and long-term implications of robotics, AI, and automation. She wrote Wirecutter’s guide to smart displays and secretly wishes someone would bring back Jibo.
Alexa's Drop In feature only works with other Alexa-enabled devices. The speaker comes with a gray base, but you can get it in a few different colors, including a nice coral or copper. It's only the base that you can change, however, so you'll be stuck with the white top no matter what.
And while it has some smart-home integrations and third-party Actions comparable to Alexa’s Skills, it has fewer of either than Alexa does, though it continues to improve. We recommend a few other Google Assistant devices below and have a guide to the best smart displays and the best Google Assistant devices. The speakers themselves don't make that choice any easier, because both are quite good; the Echo has been our Editors' Choice winner for a long time, but the Nest Audio is a close runner-up. The Echo's bass is a bit better and Alexa can use multiple wake words, but the Nest Audio sounds quite clear and Google Assistant is easier to talk to thanks to more flexible natural language recognition. In the sub-$50 price range, the Echo Dot has a clear edge over the Nest Mini in audio quality, but even those two smaller speakers work well for what they are and offer the same choice between voice assistants.
If you need help on a step, just ask, and the Home Hub will find relevant instructions or a YouTube video. Google Assistant does a good job controlling the smaller selection of smart-home devices it works with, and while it doesn’t pair up with quite as many devices as Alexa, some integrations are a bit easier to use. For example, its integration with the Nest Learning Thermostat lets you say “Hey Google, make it warmer” to raise the temperature. With Alexa, you need to say “Alexa, turn living room Nest to XX degrees,” and if you vary your language it simply won’t work. Both platforms let you deploy Routines so you can, for example, use one command to turn off all the lights and lower the thermostat.
For the Echo, Alexa’s voice can be changed to different accents or languages. Alexa is able to control connected smart devices, tell you the weather, play games, set reminders, and much more. However, Google Home does win out on its ability to better understand the questions you have and answer them more appropriately . Additionally, Google Home’s audio quality and ease of use for Android users make it an attractive choice – not to mention its inherent compatibility with Google services like Google Maps, Calendar, Gmail and more.
PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. Both voice assistants are neck and neck, though we give Google Assistant a slight edge thanks to its better natural language recognition. It doesn't have the number of third-party skills Alexa does, but it's still robust, and easier to talk to.
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