The Ultimate Voice Assistant Battle.

Ooh. Oh. There's another dimension to this. Let's say that I'm finished with my studies and I want to turn off my smart light bulb. I can just say, " Turn off the light". And actually every single one of these assistants can do this, providing you have a light that's compatible with them. I bet you didn't expect Alexa to be winning this right now. But that was light work. So let's get a little more complicated. Let's say you're in your bedroom, you're winding down for the day, and you want to use your voice assistants for device control. Turn off Bluetooth.

Increase screen brightness by 20%. Wow. Changed my wallpaper.

Turn on dark mode. Come on, Alexa. Take a selfie. Hmm. Oh, let's try this. Take a picture in five seconds. Alexa is falling behind. And how much battery do I have left? Not bad. Unsurprisingly, Google's made back some ground here, as device control is kind of what it's designed for. But again, there is a bigger picture with these assistants. What if someone rings your smart doorbell while you're in bed? What I've done is set up a ring doorbell outside my cat flap. And on Google Assistant, Bixby, and Alexa, I can check up on it just by saying, " Who's at the door"? And they will show me. Oh my gosh, this guy's too cute. Siri doesn't work with ring doorbells. And will instead just serve you a, " Huh"? You tend to find that Apple is a bit more restrictive with the brands that they're compatible with, but they do still get the point here because there are smart doorbells you can use. All right, now I imagine you're doing some cooking. Your phone's on the counter, but you don't really want to touch it because you might have greasy hands. But you still want to ask it stuff. So how good is each of these assistants at answering internet queries? What's the weather like today? Better bring a coat then. What will be the highest temperature today? Oh, I like this one. What will the weather be like on Tuesday next week? That's shorts and t-shirt weather. Should I take an umbrella with me today? Love that. What song is this?

- Hmm.

- Honestly, horrific.

- Okay, but what if while I'm doing this, I wanna set the kettle to boil without touching it? Well, the way you would do that is to have a smart plug that you can turn on and off remotely, and then a specific kettle that allows you to hold the boil button on, so that as soon as that plug is remotely activated, it will go straight into boiling the water. And turns out, every single one of these assistants is able to control smart plugs like this. So one point to all of them.

Internet Queries

Okay, let's delve deeper into the internet queries. How old is Rick Astley?

That's smart. How many number one songs does he have? That's right. Is he playing any concerts in the near future? Can you print me some tickets too? Okay, let's try a different act. When is the next Avengers movie due to be released? What's it called? Oof. Will Spider-Man be in it?

Show me paintings by Monique.

What style of painting was he famous for?

Yikes. Show me a recipe for passion fruit pie. Could eat one of those right now. But what if I have guests over to eat a big slice of my passion fruit pie? What if I want to set the mood? I'm gonna need some smooth jazz music, of course. So Siri, Google, and Alexa all have accompanying smart speakers. And because these are Wi-Fi speakers, your assistant will be able to locate them within your house and automatically start playing your smooth jazz through them. A sub to the channel would be Jazzy.

Bixby doesn't have its own smart speaker, so the only way to play your music out loud is to connect to one via Bluetooth. But that's not nearly as seamless, so it's not getting that point. But we can get tougher by testing now how much control each one of these assistants can exert over third-party apps. Open the App Store.

Set an alarm for 7am.

Just bear in mind for Alexa that sometimes even when it is actually correctly executing a command, it doesn't always show you that on screen. Show me my photos from 2021.

Which of them were taken in the United States?

them had dogs in them. Ouch. How far is it from Sicily to Rome?

Can you give me the directions?

Google Play a Song on Youtube

Nice, Google! Play a song on YouTube. Oh, yes! This is really tough. Play Stranger Things Season 4 on Netflix. Hot take. Stranger Things is overrated. Send a tweet. Now, also, while we're in this room, I've got my smart vacuum cleaner.

Smart Vacuum Cleaner

So let's see if we can put it to work. Vacuum up the kitchen, please. The kitchen is on the other side of the house from here.

So I'll be quite impressed if it understands a command that specific and can actually navigate all the way to the kitchen to clean. And turns out, it does on Google Assistant, Bixby and Alexa. That's incredible! Siri doesn't, though. You can use it to start vacuuming, but it doesn't understand anything beyond that. And now for some of the most advanced app commands. Send an email to Mrs Who's the Boss. No way! Search eBay for Nintendo GameCube.

translates the following.

Okay, you can probably blame my French for that. Read this out for me.

I know someone who could use this.

Yes, Google! What can I do here?

Create a new contact, new dad.

Message them to say hello.

Oh. Can you switch from voice input to keyboard input?

Add a laughing, crying emoji.

But what about the human factor? Because it's one thing to have a really intelligent assistant, but I would say it's just as important how naturally they can interact with a human user. What's my name? That's not actually how you pronounce it. Call me Bossman instead. Thank you.

Tell Me a Joke

Tell me a joke. Tell me a dad joke. Remember that my keys are under the mat.

Okay, forget everything I told you today.

Routines

And finally, the toughest category of them all, routines. Every single one of these assistants also has the option to execute a whole series of actions when you give them a single command. You can create routines that activate based on where you are. Like, for example, I've set one up that detects whether I'm home past 5pm. And if I am, it will say Welcome home it'll turn the lights on, it'll even turn the kettle on. And, shockingly, this works on both Google and Siri. I'm impressed. One point to each. One of the other things I wanted to test was a routine that detects when you connect your phone to your car via Bluetooth and then opens up all the apps that you'd want to use on it. And only Bixby can do this one. Where it starts playing my driving music playlist, opens Waze for traffic detection, turns on Do Not Disturb on my phone, and then asks me where are we going. That is awesome. For number 63, I wanted to use dismissing my alarm as a trigger to be able to open news. Because first thing in the morning when I get out of bed, it would be so cool to be able to immediately just be on the news and seeing what's happening in the world. And this actually works on all four of them. Plus, you can take it further by also activating a morning routine just by saying good morning to each of these. But Bixby is truly the hidden MVP when it comes to routines. I realised it can actually go as complex as managing your bad habits. It can detect if a game that you're addicted to, for example, is being played between certain times on certain days, and it can use that input to trigger alarm bells. It can make my light red. It can close the app, deactivate my Wi-Fi, and even tell me off for trying. So the winner of best voice assistant is Google. Are you ready to see me drop the one iPhone 14 that I have? The only reason I did that is because this case, the RhinoShield SolidSuit, can absorb impact like that. And it's just been upgraded. It's now easier to take off and put on. It's easier to clean. It's grippier. You can now get a version with MagSafe compatibility that is two times stronger than Apple's own cases. And this is my favourite part about RhinoShield. It is even more customisable. Along with new colours, you can change the camera ring, you can change the buttons. You can choose from what feels like a million designs, from PewDiePie to Dragon Ball. And when you pair this with RhinoShield's new Grip, which is available in both adhesive and MagSafe versions, then it's not just that it can tank just about any drop you can throw at it, but you'll also be about a tenth as likely to actually drop it in the first place. So whether you're getting a new phone or you just want to spruce up your existing phone, check the link below. the comments.