The results of Loup Ventures annual “smarkt speaker IQ” test has now been published, and the surprise winner is Google Home. According to the results, Apple’s HomePad and Siri bested Alexa and Cortana, which is quite a surprise.
800 questions was asked to the virtual assistants, and then graded based on whether the question was understood and if there was a correct response.
- Local – Where is the nearest coffee shop?
- Commerce – Can you order me more paper towels?
- Navigation – How do I get to uptown on the bus?
- Information – Who do the Twins play tonight?
- Command – Remind me to call Steve at 2 pm today.
The contenders that were tested included:
- 2nd generation Amazon Echo
- Google Home Mini
- Apple HomePod
- Harman Kardon Invoke
As you can see below in the comparison table, Google Home understood all the queries and was able to answer 88 percent of them correctly. Cortana was only able to answer 63 percent of questions correctly.
It looks like, based on this test and previous ones conducted by Loup, all the virtual assistants improved. The firm said that “Alexa had the most noticeable improvement.”
Loup credited Google’s overall win partly to featured snippets. “Google Assistant’s outperformance stems largely from the search function ‘featured snippets’ . . . Where others may answer with, ‘here’s what came back from a search’ and a list of links, Google is able to read you the answer.”