Planning to buy a Smart Voice Assistant?

Smarter Voice Assistants

The Amazon Echo and Google Home have received more upgrades over the past year than your average consumer gadget. The Echo has long been our Editors' Choice, but considering both smart speakers can do a heck of a lot more now than they could even just a few months ago, how do they stack up today? Let us consider the Amazon Echo and Google Home for camparision

Alexa vs. Google Assistant

Both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have developed into excellent voice assistants. They have dueling sets of features: Alexa supports slightly more smart home devices, for instance, while Google lets you upload your own music to its cloud.

Alexa is much more configurable if you're willing to stick to its specific syntax, while Google Assistant is easier to use, less frustrating, and more fluid. Hollering different combinations of words at Google is more likely to result in a useful response. But if you learn and memorize Alexa's phrases, you can dig down to find more obscure information sources and more skills with big third-party brands like Lyft.

Google's speakers, by default, sound better. But the 3.5mm output jack on Amazon's models opens up a huge world of third-party speakers you can then enable with little effort. Alexa is also available on more third-party speakers than Google Assistant, including the excellent Sonos One.

This split has opened up in our office. Some of our editors who are big on smart home are Alexa loyalists, while my family has grown very happy yelling, "Hey Google!" That's why we're declaring a tie among the two voice assistants right now. To help you decide which speaker is right for you, here's how they compare.

Wi-Fi, Skills, and Calls

The Echo and Home connect to your home Wi-Fi network. In testing, the Home had weaker Wi-Fi connectivity than the Echo. We were able to use the Echo in some places the Home just couldn't reach.

And while the Home now has more than 1,800 third-party skills, letting you order pizzas from Domino's and cars from Uber, Alexa has more than 24,000. Many of those Alexa skills aren't worth much, but there are still more local bus systems, radio stations, and sports stat skills on Alexa.

Both the Echo and Google Home now let you make outbound voice calls to regular phones. Google Home devices can't receive calls. Amazon's Echo can receive calls from other Echos, and it can also receive calls on your home phone line with a $34.99 Echo Connect box.

Google has superior multi-user functions. The Home can recognize up to six people's voices and seamlessly switch between their accounts and preferences. You have to tell Echo specifically, "switch account to X," to switch accounts.

Voice Control

The speakers use voice activation to control music playback, searches, and supported smart home devices. The Echo has multiple wake word options, but only one female voice. You can alert her with, "Alexa," "Amazon," "Echo," or "Computer." Google Home (pictured below) only has one wake word option, "Hey Google," but it now has both male and female voices.

Google Assistant is much better at handling free-form, web-based queries than Alexa is. Alexa tends to be a stickler for wording, and for particular sequences of words. Alexa also leans heavily on Wikipedia for general knowledge queries, while Google's search is more comprehensive. One area Alexa beats Google, predictably, is shopping-related queries she really wants to help you buy things from Amazon.

Both can do things like spell words, set timers, and read you the news. Google Assistant is more conversational: It will often remember what you were talking about or let you carry ideas throughout a conversation. For instance, if you ask, "Who was the leading actor in Taken?," you can follow up with, "What other movies was he in?