- [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. (bright upbeat music) - 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? (soft upbeat music) Did he play in the NBA? (soft upbeat music) What team did he play for? (soft upbeat music) 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? (soft upbeat music) Okay, how tall is it? (soft upbeat music) How many meters is that? (soft upbeat music) What is it made of? (soft upbeat music) See, again, Google remembers
what we're talking about. When is the Weeknd's birthday? (soft upbeat music) What's their latest album? (soft upbeat music) What's his real name? (soft upbeat music) 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. Either way, channel sponsor Dbrand, also would like you to know
that they are relaunching the Damascus skin. They're bringing it back
due to popular demand. It's got all this like crazy
reflective holographic chaos. You can kinda skin whatever
device you want too so you can make it work and you
get a free Triple Black skin with your order, which is
sick, I'll link it below. Thanks for watching and I'll
catch you guys in the next one. Peace. (bright upbeat music)
What makes me wonder about Google assistant is when I set a timer with it, sometimes it sets a timer on the page but sometimes it directs me to the clock app and sets the timer. I wonder why.
He mentioned Siri Shortcuts but didn’t mention Bixby Routines. I use Shortcuts extensively but I can say that Routines is better.
Too bad Bixby is likely going to get axed in the coming years. Removing the Bixby name from applications such as "Bixby routines" is now called "Modes and Routines"
Also the fact that Samsung never mentions the Bixby speaker that they announced years ago and have never actually sold it...
This shows how underrated Bixby is. I've been using Bixby lately and it does pretty much everything I ask it to do
Imagine if there was a voice assistant powered by openai or something similar
2023? 2023 hasn't even started.
Well, if he's going to talk about Siri being able to execute routines, then Bixby is even better there because Bixby Routines (now called 'Modes and Routines', why...) is basically Shortcuts but way better.
A combination of Bixby and Google Assistant is very good, I've found recently, if you use Smartthings. You can set up a sort of 'switch room' in your house (which is not a real room) and add a bunch of virtual switches that activate things on a Google Nest speaker, whether based on Bixby Routines or otherwise.
While you might be wondering why not just use Google Home - the answer is that Smartthings is already compatible with a huge number of locally operable devices without any internet connection, while we still wait to see how Matter devices work and whether the whole thing will actually live up to its promise (because Google doesn't support Zigbee and Z-Wave).
Samsung phones are double covered.
Google assistant is of course the best, but the few things it can't do, Bixby does. Like location based reminders and very device specific settings
Google assistant is also bilingual if you choose to (actually in Norway it also speaks English by default now)
Told y'all been sleeping on Bixby. Does a fine job for me, as I mostly use it for on device things. Loved it and want it to succeed, so it encourages innovation.