• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 21, 2018

Although they’re called smart speakers, anyone with a device like Amazon Echo or Google Home realizes their speakers may be not be so smart at all times.

In addition to using them for listening to music, consumers tend to ask questions of their smart speakers.

There really are two parts to that equation: having the speaker correctly understand the question and then providing the correct answer. It turns out that smart speakers are much better at one than the other, according to an annual smart speaker test conducted by Loup Ventures.

When Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana were asked questions, their understanding of the query was great, ranging from 100% for Google down to 99% by Cortana.

For the test, 800 of the same questions were asked of each of the digital assistants on four devices:  Amazon Echo, Google Home, HomePod and Invoke. The categories of questions related to local, commerce, navigation, information and commands.

For answering queries, Google Assistant did best (88%), followed by Siri (75%), Alexa (73%) and Cortana (63%).

The good news is that over a 12-month period, Google Home improved by 7%, Echo 9%, Siri 22% and Cortana 7%.

Smart speakers aren’t yet brilliant, but they are getting smarter.