Amazon's Echo smart speakers, powered by the talkative Alexa assistant, offer an option for every room in the smart home. But an incomplete launch puts it at a disadvantage in the war of words with Google and Apple.

Three Amazon speakers are available in Australia right now: the small $79 Echo Dot, standard $149 Echo and tall $229 Echo Plus. Their arrival coincides with the local launch of the Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service.

Size-wise, the Echo and Echo Dot are a fraction smaller than Google's Home and Home Mini, with an 8-centimetre footprint making them compact enough to live on a bedside table, kitchen bench, coffee table or bathroom basin.

While the Echo Plus is taller than the standard Echo, thankfully it still has the same small footprint. Meanwhile the upcoming Google Home Max and Apple HomePod will take up a lot more space, but in return they'll deliver much better sound for large living areas.

The Echo Plus forgoes physical volume buttons in favour of twisting the top of the speaker like a dial, while all three Echo speakers have a microphone mute button and an Action button which cancels a timer or alarm. The status ring turns blue when you have Alexa's attention or a reassuring red when the microphone is disabled.

Amazon is the smart speaker pioneer in the US and has an army of loyal users, but in Australia it's the challenger playing catch-up. Unfortunately for Amazon, the Echo range would make a better first impression if we weren't already familiar with Google's slick speakers.

"Alexa" rolls off the tongue more easily than "Okay, Google" and helps personalise her, so interactions feel more natural, but relying on a single word means it's easier to wake Amazon's speakers by accident.

You can change the trigger word to "Amazon", "Echo" or "Computer" – which might be handy if someone named Alexa already lives in your house – and there are reports that Google Assistant will soon let you change its trigger word.

When it comes to listening skills, the Amazon speakers are much more sensitive. Alexa hears you clearly if you speak to her from the next room, while you need to raise your voice to catch Google Assistant's attention. In a noisy environment they're both very good at picking out your words.

Unlike Google Assistant, Alexa can't yet tell the difference between voices in Australia, even though she can in the US.

This hampers Alexa's usefulness in a busy household where people want personalised answers to questions like "Alexa, what am I doing today?". On the plus side, she can read shared calendars when accessing your Google Calendar whereas Google Assistant only reads out your own.

Alexa's Australian voice doesn't sound quite as natural as Google's, especially on the tiny Echo Dot which falls significantly short of the Google Home Mini when it comes to sound quality.

Alexa sounds hollow and tinny on the Dot, while only offering two-thirds the volume of the Mini. Podcasts, streaming radio and audio books don't sound too bad but the difference is more striking when you listen to music.

For now you're limited to iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Spotify and Amazon Music Unlimited. Amazon offers a three-month trial of its music service. You can ask Alexa to play songs, albums or artists but she's a little more prone to mistakes than Google Assistant drawing on Google Play Music.

Six-user Family plans are available at launch, despite Amazon's prior statements, although they're not included in the three-month trial so you'll need to pay $17.99 p/m from day one. You can also listen to some radio news bulletins as part of Alexa's Flash Briefings feature.

Music lovers won't be impressed with the Echo Dot. Crashy music with decent bass like the Red Hot Chili Peppers sounds painfully harsh and distorts as you crank the volume past seven. The distortion eases off when you listen to more nuanced music like Miles Davis, but the lack of bass means that listeners with an ear for quality will turn up their nose.

All the Echo speakers have an impressive trick up their sleeve: the ability to connect to an external speaker via Bluetooth or a 3.5mm audio cable. This makes it easy to give your existing speakers a smart overhaul, rather than buying a separate streaming music adapter like Google's Chromecast Audio.

Thankfully the sound quality improves when you step up to the standard Echo speaker. There's more bass and the quality is roughly on par with the standard Google Home.

The Echo is actually louder than the Google Home but again Amazon's speaker is more prone to distortion. It sounds terrible at full volume – especially with crashy, bass-heavy music – and again you'd be reluctant to crank the volume above seven, which is the equivalent of the Home's full volume.

The Echo Plus goes louder again and bumps up the bass to offer a warmer, richer sound which doesn't distort until the volume hits eight or nine. It's the pick of the bunch for music lovers, but the sound quality still falls far short of the $299 Sonos One, which will be updated for free to work with both Alexa and Google Assistant.

If you take your sound seriously then it's worth spending more for the Sonos, which offers the volume and quality to really rock a small to medium room, even though you'll have to wait until autumn for Alexa.

Like their rivals, Echo speakers support multi-room audio for listening to the same song throughout the house. You can group speakers into zones using the Alexa app, so you can ask her to play music "downstairs" or "everywhere". If you try to play two different songs on different speakers you're politely told "Amazon Music is streaming on another device" and you must choose between them. Unless you have a Family music account.

The Echo Plus is also blessed with the low-powered Zigbee wireless smart home protocol, with Amazon throwing in a Philips Hue smart lightbulb to get you started. You can also say "Alexa, discover my devices" to find Wi-Fi-enabled smart gear around your home like Belkin WeMo smart switches.

Like Google, you can create routines such as "Alexa, good morning" or "Alexa, I'm home" to trigger a string of smart home commands.

Of course the other big differentiator between Amazon and Google's speakers is the capabilities of their smart assistants. Alexa launches with a decent mix of local "skills" but we're still missing out on some of the features that make her so useful in the US.

Australians can keep a shopping list but they can't order goods directly from Amazon – a cornerstone of the US Alexa experience which perhaps won't be practical here until Amazon Prime launches. Nor can they control Amazon's Fire TV Stick Basic Edition streaming video dongle. Combined with the inability to recognise different voices, it feels like Amazon is still treating Australia as an afterthought even though it has already given Google a big head start.

Alexa and the Echo speakers show a lot of promise but, aside from Zigbee and support for external speakers, for now there's little to recommend Amazon's Echo speakers over Google's ecosystem until Alexa starts treating Aussies as equals.