What’s the best smart speaker that I can buy?

There’s so much going on in this space it’s hard to pick out a single speaker that Guru would call ‘best’. Not because they’re bad (though there is a hefty stack of duds out there) but because they’re mostly pretty good.

Before GaGu upsets any manufacturers by inadvertently and advertently trash-talking their hardware, let’s upset a whole lot of coders (and fanboys) by talking entirely objectively about the smart AIs powering them and which is best. It is Google

Assistant. That is the best one. It understands queries more frequently, it deals with them more effectively, and its wealth of knowledge is deeper. Don’t take Guru’s word for it: this is all based on research from the guys at Loupe Ventures. Alexa falls in the middle, and Siri at the bottom – though the latter earned commendations for its abilities on a phone.

For Apple’s sake it’s a shame we’re not talking about iPhones here. Given that the only Siri smart speaker is the HomePod, a thing that is (in Guru’s opinion) too expensive and not quite good enough, that pretty much puts Siri out of the running altogether.

So we’re looking for a smart speaker that runs Google Assistant. GaGu has little time for Google’s first-party equipment, with the smaller ends of its range perfectly fine but doing little to excite your expert’s hairy little ears, and the Max variety plenty loud but (again, personally) disappointingly muddy in its delivery.

There are two third party speakers which Guru is going to recommend. They’re expensive and needlessly portable, but they support both Google Assistant And Alexa, and they both offer exemplary audio quality. Whether you opt for the Bose Portable Home Speaker or the fatter, heavier Sonos Move is really up to you.

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