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00:00What's your name? I'm Siri. Pleased to meet you. My nickname is the Google Assistant.
00:06The name's Bixby. I'm Alexa.
00:11I've talked and made jokes in the past, mostly along the lines of, uh, Google Assistant is
00:15clearly the best virtual assistant. And then Bixby, Siri, and Alexa are various levels of
00:21far behind. But last time I did this type of test was 2017. So I figured we should revisit
00:28this a little bit, retest things, and figure out if Google Assistant still actually is
00:33the best virtual assistant on a smartphone right now. Also, shout out to Clippy,
00:38the original virtual assistant, whose ugly Christmas sweater from Microsoft is actually
00:42what inspired this one, the MKBHD 8-bit drip, which you can get while supplies last. They're
00:47very limited, but they're at shop.mkbhd.com, link below. But I decided to start with the
00:52simple questions. You know, the three things that you ask from an assistant the most often,
00:57I think, are the weather, timers, and facts. So they all do fine with the weather question,
01:02probably the number one query for me anyway. And then for the most part, they were also the same
01:06pretty quick with just asking standard facts. Although for some reason they did disagree on
01:11the height of one person. But then for timers, for timers, for one weird reason, Siri cannot do
01:18multiple timers at the same time on the iPhone. If you have a timer running and ask for a second
01:24timer, it asks you every time if you want to replace the first timer. Pretty basic stuff that
01:29I'm not sure why Apple hasn't fixed yet, especially because you can set multiple timers at the same
01:34time with Siri on a HomePod mini. But anyway, I don't want to make you watch a whole bunch of
01:39back-to-back-to-back questions and answers because as I admit, it was kind of boring when I was doing
01:43all that testing. But I'm going to share some examples of what I found with you and then some
01:48of the highlights of the testing and the way it answers these questions and you interact with them.
01:52So here we go. So with all the latest software updates on every assistant, all being asked the
01:58exact same questions, asked to do the exact same tasks with the same phrasing and on the same Wi-Fi
02:04connections, most often the fastest one to answer was Google Assistant or Siri. But, but Siri and
02:12Bixby, in my experience, did have the most instances of like hanging and pausing and not
02:18really answering a question. Kind of like acting like they had a poor internet connection even
02:21though they didn't. Not sure why they did that. A restart of the phone helped with the Bixby one.
02:26Siri just kind of does it randomly. Not sure why, but that's a real fact. But then with straight-up
02:30fact questions, there is no runaway winner, which I think is a good thing actually. So if you ask
02:34something that's easily Google-able or on Wikipedia, something like, how tall is the Taj Mahal?
02:40They can all get it. Or if you ask, what do whales eat? They all had some type of answer for me that
02:46was basically the same. Siri, I found, relies the most heavily on Wikipedia as a source for almost
02:51all of its answers. And then when it does have to go outside of that, it just kind of throws up a
02:55web search link, often with Wikipedia at the top. It says, look what I googled for you. Now Google
03:00Assistant is the most likely to give you a nice visual and slightly more information than you
03:05asked for. Bixby is powered by Google. So I would say it's the most likely to read what Google
03:11Assistant reads word for word. And then Alexa is the most likely to throw in some extra information
03:16about your latest Amazon order or something random. So facts, they can all do great. Then
03:22there is what I call the device control category, because these are assistants that are on your
03:28smartphones. There are smart speakers as well, but on your phone, you'd like to be able to help
03:31you out with things while you can't use your hands. And for this, there was a runaway winner,
03:36actually two, and that would be Google Assistant and Bixby. So with the most basic, basic stuff,
03:43they're pretty much all fine. They can all change your screen brightness, for example,
03:47except Alexa, but they can also all open the camera or pretty much any app on your phone
03:52with a voice command. That's easy. Setting an alarm is light work. If you ask it actually to
03:56open the app store, they all open their respective app stores. And actually Bixby opens
04:01the Samsung Galaxy store, which is kind of cheeky, but when it starts to get more complex,
04:07Google and Bixby start to walk away from the others. So if I ask it to take a selfie,
04:12Siri and Alexa will just open the camera, but Bixby and Google actually open the camera,
04:17switch to the selfie camera, and start a self timer and actually take a selfie. If I want to
04:22say play Squid Game on Netflix, both Google and Bixby will actually open the Netflix app,
04:29find the first episode of Squid Game I haven't seen yet or wherever I left off,
04:32and start playing it. Siri just opens the app and Alexa is lost. If I say start a voice recording
04:39or a voice memo for Siri, again, Google and Bixby open the voice recording app and actually
04:44start that recording. Siri again, just opens the app and again, Alexa is lost. These voice
04:51commands when they work are legitimately faster than I would have been able to do it by hand for
04:54the most part. And there's a bunch of other device specific stuff that Samsung's programmed
04:58into Bixby where it can reach into apps and perform specific commands within them. So if
05:04there are apps you use a lot, this can potentially save you a lot of time. Bixby was also great at
05:08this last time I did it. And also Alexa is unsurprisingly the worst at device control
05:13because they aren't making their own phone. These aren't Amazon phones. So the vertical integration
05:18is great with Siri and Google Assistant and Bixby, not with Alexa. Not a shocker there.
05:24What might be a little bit of a surprise though is conversationalism. Who is the coach of the
05:29Phoenix Suns? How tall is he? Did he play in the NBA? What team did he play for?
05:48So you can see Siri tapped out after about four questions in a row about the same thing,
05:51but Google Assistant is incredible at this. It's really, really good at remembering
05:56the context and the subject of a natural conversation and carrying that on
06:00through a bunch of questions in a row. Where is the Taj Mahal? Okay. How tall is it?
06:13How many meters is that?
06:19What is it made of?
06:21See, again, Google remembers what we're talking about. When is the weekend's birthday?
06:31What's their latest album?
06:38What's his real name?
06:43So basically, if you're asking a bunch of questions in a row,
06:46or if you have one subject that you want to basically research through the voice assistant
06:50or get a bunch of answers on, your best bet is definitely Google Assistant. And then one more
06:55interesting thing from the queries that I asked, just as far as getting pictures. When you ask for
06:59pictures of something, like dogs for example, they can all search the web except Bixby didn't
07:04and Alexa, which is looking for an Amazon photos app for some reason. But when you say,
07:10show me my pictures of dogs, Google actually opens and searches in my own photos album
07:16for my own pictures of dogs. So I did a bunch of other testing like this with a bunch of other
07:20different questions, different styles of questions, follow up questions and things like that.
07:24And I've come to a pretty solid conclusion. So if you're wondering, which one is the best? Marques,
07:30you did all these tests, which one came out as number one? Only one thing became exceptionally
07:36Only one thing became exceptionally clear through all this testing, which is that Alexa is clearly
07:43the worst. It's clearly far behind the others as a smart assistant on a phone. Even if I mean,
07:49unless maybe you're already deep in the Amazon Alexa ecosystem with everything working perfectly
07:56in your smart home. Matter of fact, this really is an ecosystem question almost as much as it is a
08:02skills question for the assistance. Because if you are super all in on one of these smart home
08:08ecosystems that actually could answer the question for you. Of course, if you're all in with HomeKit,
08:13then Siri and an iPhone is your only option to view your cameras and see your doorbell ringing
08:18and turn on your lights and all that stuff. But if you are doing the same with Google Home and
08:22Google Assistant, then you're there. Now the next gen matter standard may change all of this,
08:28it may actually make this section irrelevant. Maybe leave a thumbs up on this video or comment
08:33if you're interested in a video about that specifically. But for now, with these different
08:37silos of home ecosystems, that's pretty important. But I'll still say from my most common experiences
08:43and queries and the things that are most useful across every single phone, iPhones or Android
08:49phones, the most useful assistant is still Google Assistant. And that's multiplied if you also happen
08:55to have a Pixel phone because then you also get, you know, call screening and hold for me and all
09:00those extra Pixel features. But in general, Google Assistant is most likely to be fast, it's most
09:05likely to give a good well-sourced answer, it's most likely to be conversational and remember
09:10context longer, and it has a bunch of third-party plugs, tons of app support, and I also happen to
09:16have built my smart home in the Google Home world. So it's great. Now for the second best, I'm very
09:22tempted to say Bixby. Of course though, this is only relevant if you have a Samsung phone, and also
09:30it is basically saying all the same first query responses that Google Assistant was, minus the
09:36ability to talk to a smart speaker since, you know, Samsung would probably like us to forget about that.
09:43But I am going to have to put Siri in second place here. It's fine, it's okay, it's all right, it's
09:49fine. It's not great, but it is the most well-plugged into Apple's ecosystem, so of course if you're
09:54doing HomeKit stuff, it's going to work well there. It does support a smart speaker which can do
09:59multiple timers if you're not doing stuff all the time on your phone, and it does support routines,
10:04which is like stacking a bunch of different commands into one action if you're willing to
10:09dig through the very convoluted Siri shortcuts interface. So that puts Bixby in third place, and
10:15Alexa is just bad. It's just bad on a phone. Like there was a phone a couple years ago, an HTC phone
10:22where it was built in, so there was a Google Assistant and Alexa side by side on the same phone,
10:28and it worked kind of well back then, but that was years ago, and Alexa is just dead last on a phone
10:33right now, and Amazon knows it. Amazon is falling behind with Alexa, and if you're just starting to
10:38use assistants or put together a smart home or this type of stuff, I would say avoid things that
10:42are Alexa exclusive right now, but until then let me know if you agree that Google Assistant still
10:47seems pretty far out in front, or maybe there are some specific features that you find the most
10:50useful in a virtual assistant. Let me know in the comments. Either way, channel sponsor dbrand also
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11:10your order, which is sick. I'll link it below. Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.