Apple popularized digital voice assistants by adding Siri to the iPhone 4s, but the field of devices that support voice interaction has expanded considerably since 2011. Amazon added Alexa to its Echo lineup, the Google Assistant powers Google Home, and Cortana can help you navigate Windows 10.
So Apple is stepping up its game by putting Siri in the home via the HomePod smart speaker, and it looks very promising. Since it uses Siri, HomePod is already working with a well-known voice assistant, and as a speaker it appears to be bigger and more powerful than Google Home or Amazon's Echo variations.
You'll have to wait until later this year to see the Apple HomePod in action. It's scheduled to launch in time for the 2017 holiday season, a significantly longer gap than most Apple products have between announcement and shipping. In the meantime, though, we can see how it stacks up on paper against the Echo and Google Home.
Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant?
The voice assistants in these speakers help differentiate them from the hundreds of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi speakers out there. Amazon Echo has Alexa, Google Home has Google Assistant, and Apple HomePod will have Siri. They all work in much the same way, but they don't work together.
All three voice assistants use cloud computing for voice recognition and responding to queries and demands. This means each device needs to be connected to the internet to work; otherwise it's just a speaker that gives you a connection error when you try to talk to it. When you're connected, your demands are sent to Amazon, Apple, or Google servers, which find an answer to your question or connect with the services you want to use and send the proper response back to the device.
While the precise context you can use and the exact format of the responses you get vary, the actual behavior of these voice assistants are very similar. Ask any of them what the weather is, and you'll get a forecast. Ask for sports information, and you'll get game scores. Tell them to play a song, and you'll hear music played through their respective music services. Tell them to turn off your lights, and they'll turn off if you have a smart lighting setup. It's the individual services that really differentiate the voice assistants and the speakers.
Music Services
Amazon, Apple, and Google have their own media ecosystems, with their own music libraries. Amazon has Amazon Music for a la carte digital music purchased, along with Prime Music for Amazon Prime subscribers and Music Unlimited as a premium music subscription service. Apple has the extensive iTunes digital music store and the Apple Music subscription services. Google has Google Play Music with its own on-demand library and subscription service. In all cases, you can buy the songs you want to keep in your personal digital library and access millions of different tracks with a subscription.
For a la carte music purchases, Apple has a pretty undisputed edge. The iTunes music store was one of the first major digital distribution platforms for labels and artists, and it remains one of the biggest names in the game. When a new album drops, it'll probably show up on iTunes first. Amazon Music and Google Play Music are no slouches, but Apple has a pretty significant advantage for the hottest and the newest music.
On the other hand, Amazon has a soft advantage for music you don't have to individually purchase. Amazon Prime subscribers get a pretty solid library of 2 million songs with Prime alone. You can also get tens of millions of songs on your Echo through Amazon's Music Unlimited service for just $3.99 per month, and Music Unlimited on all of your mobile devices, including your Echo speakers, for $7.99 per month for Prime members.
If you don't have Amazon Prime, the advantage is lost; Music Unlimited is $9.99 per month, the same monthly price as subscriptions to Google Music Play and Apple Music, both of which also offer tens of millions of songs.
You can also tap into Spotify Premium, Pandora, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio on your Echo. Google Home is equipped with Google Cast for Wi-Fi music streaming and supports Spotify Premium and Pandora, as well as YouTube Red. If you don't want to deal with a music service or digital purchases, the Amazon Echo and Google Home both function as standard Bluetooth speakers to which you can stream your own music.
The HomePod doesn't appear to have Bluetooth, but it will support Apple's new AirPlay 2 standard for streaming Apple Music from your Mac and various iOS devices. While Google Cast works with Android and iOS devices, however, AirPlay is an iOS-only system.
Smart Home Control
All three voice assistant devices can control your home in different ways. As an Apple speaker with Siri, the HomePod offers full voice control of any smart home device compatible with Apple's HomeKit ecosystem. That's a huge selection of lights, locks, cameras, thermostats, fans, garage door openers, and other home automation and security gadgets. If you install anything in your home with HomeKit on the box, you can control it with Siri, and that means you can control it with HomePod.
The Amazon Echo and Google Home are much more piecemeal, and lack a friendly, easily identifiable logo you can check on your lights and locks. This doesn't mean they're limiting, however; both Alexa and Google Assistant are compatible with some of the biggest names in home automation, like Nest, Philips Hue, Samsung SmartThings, and WeMo. They also support If This Then That (IFTTT), which lets you create extensively customizable recipes that can trigger compatible devices and send you notifications.
You'll have to do a bit more legwork with the Echo and Google Home, but when you're done you'll still have some pretty comprehensive voice control over your smart home.
Speaker Showdown
Besides voice-controlled home assistants, the Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo, and Google Home are all speakers designed to let you listen to music. We've tested Amazon Echo devices and Google Home, and will put the HomePod through its paces later this year. But on paper, the HomePod looks like it could be a more powerful speaker than its rivals.
The Amazon Echo features a 2.5-inch woofer and a 2-inch tweeter built into a 9.3-by-3.3-inch cylinder. This produces fairly strong sound that can easily fill a bedroom, but won't necessarily be enough to drive a party. However, the smaller Amazon Echo Dot features audio outputs that let you connect any speaker you want, offering lots of opportunity to pump up the power.
Google Home is a bit smaller at 5.6 by 3.8 inches, and doesn't get quite as loud as the Echo. It produces a very well-rounded sound that should please most listeners, but it won't be enough to fill your living room when you have guests. However, you can use multiple Google Homes together, and you can pair Google Home with a Chromecast Audio and your own speaker system.
The HomePod is the largest speaker of the three, measuring 6.8 by 5.6 inches and containing an array of seven tweeters alongside a primary woofer. As a standalone speaker, it likely is more powerful than the Amazon Echo and Google Home. We won't know how it actually sounds until we test it, but it certainly seems beefy. As an AirPlay 2 speaker, it also features multi-room support, and can work in tandem with other AirPlay speakers including any wired speakers connected through an Apple TV.
Price
This is a pretty clear-cut case. Google Home is $129, Amazon Echo is $179.99, and Apple HomePod will be $349. Apple's speaker doesn't just have Siri; it has Apple's premium pricing.
The Ecosystem Matters
Like so many home entertainment devices designed to wear many hats, the best voice assistant speaker for you will likely depend on how committed you are to the ecosystem on which it's based. If you're an Android fanatic, there's a lot to love about Google Home. If you're a dedicated Amazon Prime subscriber, the Amazon Echo offers tons of benefits. And, if you can't live without your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, the Apple HomePod might be an ideal complement.
We can recommend Amazon Echo and Google Home, and our full reviews of each can help you pick between them. As for the HomePod, we'll need to see just how well it performs when it comes out this holiday season.