A virtual assistant lets you control your home’s lighting, music, security system, and more with the sound of your voice. What could feel more personal than that? While these devices haven’t yet achieved Star Trek levels of usefulness, they can automate many of your daily tasks and often put useful data about your energy use and other habits at your fingertips. In this category, Amazon’s Echo is still beating Google Home. The Echo wins for its connectivity to other apps and devices (think: smart home players like WeMo, Phillips Hue, and Sony, and common apps like Audible, Uber, and others). Google Home, on the other hand, has spotty integration even with its own apps, like Google Calendar. What about Apple? Their new HomePod (out December 2017) is too new to gauge where it stacks up against these two—and so far, Apple seems to be emphasizing its use as a speaker rather than a virtual assistant.