Amazon Alexa is flexible and compatible with many smart home devices but can be clunky and has no native smartphone support.

You could use the Dot as an alarm clock, or you could just use it to hear the morning headlines ("Alexa, tell me the news"). Google Home Mini: Like the Dot, Google Home Mini is an extension device.

Whether you have multiple smart home devices dotted around your home or just one hub that takes care of everything, you need to choose a virtual assistant to start creating your own smart home.

Today we're going to look at Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit, focusing on what works best for different ...

Read our breakdown of Alexa versus Google Assistant versus Siri if you'd like to learn the pros and cons of each and decide on a smart home device based on its platform. Figure out what platform ...

Amazon Alexa and Google Home are great control centers to navigate your new smart home, but they aren't absolute necessities. Here are other ways to make your home smarter. John Carlsen has more ...

Alexa's chief rival, Google Assistant, has a few more languages under its belt. The Google Home speaker, powered by the Google Assistant, can speak English, German, Japanese, French, and Italian.