I compared Apple Visual Intelligence to circling to search, and the winner will not surprise you

I am perhaps that annoying friend who always wants to check something. I usually don’t try to be annoying, I just want to ensure that I get the right information, especially if it is so easily forged (sorry, it’s true). To be honest, I have always been that way and I think it started with a heavy dependence on Google Lens.

But seriously, I used the camera -based identification of Google for everything. Unknown shoes? Google -lens. Strange plant? Google -lens. Dog I have never seen before? I will usually ask the owner, but you get the idea. Then Google passed his standard identification assistant to circling to search, and emphasized what more was on your screen, and it threw me for a loop. I struggled to take over in the same way, and then the arrival of Apple Visual Intelligence wondered if I needed Google completely.

In the beginning the answer was absolutely yes. Apple Intelligence stumbled from the gate and some say it is still struggling. Visual Intelligence, however, has made up site since the launch and I think it is finally ready to give Google some problems, so I have set the two head-to-head to find out.

I don’t know when we’re about it, but apparently the color of AI is a rainbow – unless you ask Samsung, who thinks it’s blue. The good news, however, is that I like the doll in both visual intelligence and circle to search. It is distinctive and makes it easy to say what you are looking for.

In other words, if Apple or Google had settled in one color for their respective search aids on the screen, it would have been fine. You would know when the function was active and is perfectly able to select an object on your screen. However, you would always run the risk that it matches the primary color of your image or article and accidentally rise in the background. Subsequently, all accessibility wedges were switched off.

In addition to the similar color schemes, I have to give Apple and Google a little more credit for their extra controls. Looking for what is on your screen is one thing, but sometimes you need more than an image. In the case of visual intelligence you get a button to open a dialogue with chatgpt and another to take a photo to find out. They are fine, but they draw that visual intelligence is still a work in progress.

Conversely, Google has operating elements to use Google Translate or to search for music, similar to a manual that is now playing trigger. If that is not enough, you can tap the search box and go Google to use your entire display to hunt results, which works better if you try to detect that perfect display that you have found in a downloaded background – perhaps from one of our wallpaper Wednesday roundups.

Anyway, let’s go how these two tools actually perform.

I jumped in my tests of the circle to search and visual intelligence with high expectations. I already knew that circle to look could do a lot, and I thought Apple probably picked up a new trick in iOS 26. So I kept an eye on a few everyday scenarios that I might have to look up, and then I each put on the test – twice.

Every time I started with visual intelligence as the new competitor who hoped to win me. First an easy one: an opportunity to learn about a running shoe that I have already worn. I opened a written review and activated visual intelligence through the usual screenshot gesture (a pressure from the power and volume up buttons). It quickly opened a page with similar images and a few links on the right. Unfortunately it mentioned an incorrect – but visually comparable – shoe prior to the person I asked.

On the other hand, circle to search gave me a link at the top of the page of similar -looking shoes, and this time it was the right one. Between the simple gesture of printing on the navigation pill and only having to tap the shoe to search for it, the tool from Google for a clear start is. But as I said, this was an easy start, so let’s get a little harder.

I then switched for some semi-formal wedding inspiration prior to a party in Philly in a few weeks. I opened an article that I thought it would show me a bit, found the first image and decided to look for the men’s clothing that was depicted there. This time both assistants gave me identical results and they drew similar suits with prices from everywhere on the internet – still no daylight to separate them.

But when I jumped to Instagram to browse a few new peat football cleans, circle to look for his muscles. I opened a stationary image of a strewn Nike -Cleat and for more information prior to an upcoming peat season. The Google tool not only told me which shoe I was looking at – the Phantom 6 Low – but also the technology it uses in both the top and middle sole, and the changes of the previous Phantom model. Visual intelligence? Well, it showed me more photos of the same shoe plates.

For another visually heavy example, I remembered that my colleague, Rita, recently had the circle-up of the extra tools of Search, the opportunity to find songs. So I fired one of my favorite live performances, a clip from Lucy Dacus that performed in the National Gallery of Ireland, and asked Visual Intelligence to look it up. To his honor, Apple succeeded in finding more stills from the performance and showing them to me, but I felt that I already had to know a bit about the performance, because I was looking based on the image instead of the audio.

Circle to search, on the other hand, has a button specifically for finding music. When I froze Lucy and her guitar under the rainbow -colored interface of Google, I only had to press the little music note and wait for Circle to listen to listen. Then it raised results, such as where I could view the entire performance, what I could expect in terms of songs, and even her duet with Hosier later in the clip – so much more than Apple ever tried to give me.

Like I said, I went into this comparison with a fairly open mind. I was not sure whether visual intelligence could keep track of the circle to search, but I found out quite quickly. With regard to the basic principles, Apple Visual Intelligence is there, or usually there. It can look at a running shoe or a light brown suit and find other photos of the same.

As soon as I ask for more, it stumbles. As soon as I try to look for something other than an image, Visual Intelligence does not know how to respond. As soon as I try to use the extra buttons to search based on an image or type to chatgpt, it freezes and asks me what I would like to know again and again. Circle to search? Not such problems, it answered me correctly with additional information every time.

So, despite my highest hope for Apple’s final round of AI-driven updates, I am still not impressed. I want to think that Apple is only one step away from having functions on the same footing with its Android rivals, but it is not. And until it catches up, I stay with the operating system that I know and that I love.