How to Choose Between Alexa and Siri
When it comes to virtual assistants, Siri and Alexa have become famous all over the world. On the one hand, Siri is easily available on Apple devices, and Alexa is equipped with many Amazon devices, as well as other technologies. If you have a choice between them, it can be difficult to determine which one will be the most useful and convenient. I’m here to help make that choice a little easier.
How do these two assistants work?
Both Siri and Alexa use the same basic ideas and systems. Both use voice recognition to determine what you’re saying, and each uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand the meaning of the words and queries you say. This allows the assistant to grasp important context and try to give the best answer.
Both also rely heavily on machine learning to improve and better understand our interactions. You can teach each of them to better understand your voice and the context of your words so they can better help you with whatever you need them to do.
Compatibility is the key to success
One really important thing to consider when choosing an assistant is compatibility with your other home devices. While Siri may have come first and is one of the most well-known voice assistants, it is only available on Apple devices such as Mac, iPad, iPhone and HomePod. It is also available on Apple TV devices.
On the other hand, Alexa can be easily accessed on a variety of devices, including Amazon’s own Echo speakers, Android and iOS phones, and various tablets and computers through the Amazon Alexa app. If you want the most compatible and widespread voice assistant, it’s hard to beat Alexa thanks to Amazon’s continued support for Matter . Apple is also working with Matter to expand the capabilities of its devices, but Siri is still an Apple-only feature.
Multi-user support
Another important thing to consider is whether you have multiple users who are going to use your virtual assistant. By default, Alexa can support and create voice profiles for different users without having to do anything extra. This allows Alexa to respond more individually to different users, delivering results that matter most to them.
Siri also offers multi-user support, but doesn’t let you set it up automatically. In fact, you will have to customize a voice profile for each user using recordings to provide a more personalized experience. This can still be very useful, but if you’d rather have the system do it for you, Alexa is a bit more streamlined in this area.
Functions
Both Siri and Alexa provide many different functions. However, each of them does something better than the other. For example, Alexa is great as a shopping assistant thanks to unlimited access to Amazon’s huge catalog of online products. You can easily order groceries directly from your Alexa assistant, which may be convenient for some people. Siri, on the other hand, doesn’t offer any integration with Amazon or other shopping apps, so you lose that functionality.
In terms of answers, both virtual assistants can provide you with a ton of relevant answers and help you interact with different parts of your smart home and smart devices. However, Siri definitely gives the most detailed and informative answers and even gives you an easy way to find out more about it. Alexa, on the other hand, provides more direct and simple answers, although it also offers the ability to expand on them. By default, Siri uses Google Search as its search engine, but Alexa works with Bing. This can be changed, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re not familiar with the Alexa app and Siri settings.
Alexa also likes to randomly suggest things you might need, like a new mode for your smart plugs, while Siri mostly only responds to what you ask it to do. There are also plenty of installable plugins for Alexa that you can’t install on Siri, although most of them are dumb and won’t make much of a difference to how you use the device.
Language support and sound quality
When comparing virtual assistants, it is impossible not to mention language support and sound quality. Part of the appeal of using these virtual assistants is that they support your language and work throughout your home through smart speakers and other hotspots, allowing you to listen to music and other audio while you do things around the house.
If you care about sound quality, you’ll find much better sound systems in Apple’s HomePod devices. This gives Siri an advantage in terms of quality, since the HomePod is designed for better audio and the Echo speaker is designed to connect Alexa to your home more easily. However, smart speakers with Alexa can still sound great, so it ultimately depends on what level of quality you want.
When it comes to language support, Siri beats Alexa. Siri supports up to 20 languages , and Alexa is primarily available in the US and UK, although to a lesser extent it also has multilingual support .
Alexa vs Siri: which is better?
Ultimately this question comes down to what devices you want to buy and how connected you want everything to be. Alexa may be a reliable little smart assistant, but with Amazon talking about charging for it in the future , it’s unclear exactly how much of the current feature set might change in the future.
However, for quick access to your account, Amazon Alexa is a good option. If you already have a ton of Apple products or just want to stick to one ecosystem, then Siri is a great way to do it.
Ultimately, Alexa offers better compatibility with multiple types of devices, making it the best virtual assistant overall. As I noted above, Siri does some things better, but it’s hard to beat Alexa’s compatibility with all the devices it works with. If you can’t choose, you can always mix and match what you use each assistant for to take advantage of the benefits of both.