Most smart home devices are overrated and underestimated, but the feeling of telling your house the name of the song you want to play and then hearing it a second later? Never gets old. That’s why speakers are getting smarter and smarter as the years go by.

Speech recognition—or natural language processing (NLP, to be technical)—is a mind-blowing technology. A computer turns language, what we think defines humans, into zeros and ones. We teach computers grammar, morphemes, and phonemes just so we can say, “Alexa, add cat litter to the shopping list,” and it does it. But which smart speaker does it best? Most of us know that it comes down to speakers working in reverse, turning zeros and ones into noise. Sorry, is that too conceptual?

Whether you’re a diehard Alexa fan, a Google Assistant devotee, or just don’t care what disembodied voice you speak to, our tech experts have found a smart speaker for you. Through our own experience, we’ve determined which smart speakers are currently the best, whether you want a good assistant or a good speaker.

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