I've had an Echo for a couple months. I bought it for $99 as a Prime customer. Generally, I'm very happy with it, but I don't think I'd be as satisfied at the $180 price point.
Good:
- The hardware is really well designed.
- Being able to listen to NPR affiliates elsewhere in the country is awesome (Seattle's KUOW affiliate is bad, but my hometown stations of MPR and The Current are great).
- The Prime Music and Pandora integration is generally pretty cool, although the Prime Music selection is a bit thin at times.
- Timers and kitchen measurements are helpful.
Bad:
- The iOS app is absolutely horrendous. Imagine the worst web/native hybrid app that you've ever seen, now set your expectations down another order of magnitude. I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Amazon—especially one that did such an amazing job on the hardware—could create such an utterly horrible mobile companion app.
- The Echo has trouble understanding my girlfriend (a complaint I've heard from a couple other Echo users)
- You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"?
- No really, the iOS app is awful. Like, I'll go out of my way to avoid ever having to open it.
> You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"?
I think you're looking at this the wrong way.
The product is the iphone, the human-interaction agent is Siri
The product is the echo, the human-interaction agent is Alexa
"You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such."
Wait, what ?
Never mind the name mismatch - I agree that is odd.
But ... this is quick convenience device for rapid reaction to spoken commands ... and the command is three syllables ?
I understand the need to avoid false positives - waking up and responding to common speech patterns that get used throughout the day that are not directed to the device, but surely you can come up with a two-syllable command that won't generate those.
I have no intention of ever using a device like this in my home, but if I did, 50% more syllables for every interaction would drive me nuts.
I had an Echo for a month or so, then sold it on eBay after realizing it didn't fit our needs.
- It listened to me just fine, but wouldn't listen to my wife. Our dog does the same thing. I think there might be a connection there.
- The sound quality was good for the size, but doesn't compare to some other small bluetooth speakers I've experienced (like the SoundLink Mini) that make me think, "Whoa, is all that sound coming from that tiny thing?"
- Agreed that the iOS app is awful.
- The biggest miss from my perspective was the lack of integration (at least at launch) with a comprehensive streaming service. We had it in the kitchen, and it was a really nice concept to be able to say, "Alexa, play Hotel California by The Eagles" in the middle of cooking dinner, without having to clean off your hands and touch your phone, but really, Alexa could only play a sample of Hotel California by the Eagles, unless you owned it it in your Prime music library. Deeper integration with Spotify or Rdio or something would have fixed this. Maybe it's already been fixed, but if not, that's a fatal flaw.
- The hardware quality, including the remote, was top notch.
- At $100, it could be very compelling for rooms where your hands are busy. I almost kept it just for the garage, so I could use it while working on the car, or working out, or cleaning up. The kitchen is another good option. But the lack of complete music integration, and the fact that I could resell it on eBay and make money, made me give up on it.
> You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"?
You're not wrong, but this might have been intentional. I've heard complaints from people with Xbox Ones where the Xbox will suddenly decide to turn on because the owner was having a conversation with a friend and mentioned the word "Xbox." By calling the product Echo, you can have a conversation about the Echo without triggering the activation word. You're almost never going to say "Alexa" without intending to turn on the Echo.
Could you or someone else chime in with an explanation of how this works? Specifically I see all the promotional material or astroturfing or whatever about how awesome it is for families, and I also see how it links to numerous single individual person services (google calendar, various music services, audible, etc) but I can't figure out how (or if) it handles the 1:n mapping. If I ask it whats on my calendar I really don't want to hear by son's assignment notebook from school, or even something as simple as asking about traffic, my wife and I do not work in the same location, if my wife and I and my son have three separate audible accounts...
As a side issue I have no idea why its so expensive. The hardware looks like my old roku plus a speaker but the cost is that times more than three? I mean on the assumption it would wedge me into the amazon ecosystem, as a bazillion year customer and a prime subscriber, I'd expect it to be free. "Here its free and works with audible now go buy even MORE audible books"
Have you tried KPLU? They are the other local NPR and are a bit better. Still have local programming, for instance. They do go to jazz during the day (though some of us think that's not a downside).
> The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"?
Um, you say Siri instead of "iPhone" so I think they're doing exactly the same thing as Apple.
Could it be that there might be other names coming in the future - so the product is Echo, but variants are "Alexa", and then some others would come later? (My son really like a "Steve" for he loves Minecraft... lol)
It's one of the only devices in my home I use as often as my cell phone.
I look forward to the day when I can push information back to the echo using apps like tripit:
"ranman your flight is leaving in 2 hours, should I call an uber or give you the train schedule?"
"It's lunch time, want to see what's in the neighborhood you haven't tried recently?"
"You have an incoming skype call from X"
"Welcome home, want me to turn on the news?"
The only downside is that it depends on always on and fast connectivity.
I'm not particularly concerned about the privacy of it all (I do recognize the concerns other people have) but I would be interested in learning more about how the privacy is handled.
The other interesting device in this category is the Jibo: https://www.jibo.com/ but I haven't seen any of the details on the developer side of that yet.
If I had told George Orwell that people would pay for the right to have an always on microphone in their house, he would have said, "That's to far fetched even for me. I'll stick with the government forced TV in the living room."
It's pretty depressing! It's also the case that so many photos are taking place in urban areas that if you are Google/Apple/Facebook, you can almost certainly face-recognition someone's path through all the photos people take of the areas.
Dunno, paying for objects that respond when you call their name (and, like the Echo, make a lot of sound, and are mostly useless) is a pretty longstanding practice. The old type is more emotionally fulfilling, but higher maintenance.
A cautionary tale: Echo starts recording when it hears the "wake" word ('Alexa' or 'Amazon'), but it can mistake other words or parts of speech for a wake word (for example, consider how close the phrase "he likes her" is to "Alexa"). Browsing through the history I have found snippets of conversations that Echo had no business listening to, and which the recorded subjects certainly did not wish to send to Amazon.
I would like to know the ways in which people who already have an Echo use it. I have had one for months now and all I use it for is listening to music while I prepare dinner. Lately, the music has begun to stutter and that irritates me so much that I say "Alexa goodbye" and pull the plug out of the wall.
I use it daily to check the weather forecast, manage my shopping and todo list, and set timers (mainly when cooking) while I'm just walking around my apartment. I also bought the Philips Hue Lux bulbs for the cool factor ("Alexa, turn off all the lights") - but the jury's still out on them. If I had to actually use their Philips Hue android app to turn the lights on and off I would flip out. Echo actually makes them usable.
Once they open up the SDK, there's lots of things I'd love to add which will make my life easier.
It was a great buy at $99. I would have even liked to buy an additional one for my bedroom. At $179 it's a tougher sell - I would have to think twice about it. I also noticed they're selling the remote control separately for an extra $30.
I ended up putting mine in the bedroom. The only commands that I've found weekly+ uses for are:
- Turn the lights on/off
- What time is it
And that's pretty much it. Only the latter works reliably.
I would have definitely have used the home automation more, but the Amazon recommended WeMo switch that works perfectly from the WeMo app only works half the time from Echo.
It's a fun toy though. Guests always get a kick out of "Alexa, tell me a joke" and "Alexa, play some party music", and I still enjoy the occasional futuristic feeling when I e.g. listen to something interesting on NPR in my car and have Echo take over when I get home.
However, as much as I enjoy NLP and early adoption, I really struggle to find practical, non-gimmick uses for it.
I don't have a cell phone or a stereo, so the Echo is really the perfect device for me. I use it for weather, timers, news, fact look-up, math, music, etc.
I really wish it supported something like json, allowing me to get an audio of anything on the web.
Alexa is my primary alarm now. It was also common for a time to ask it what the time was or what the weather was when preparing in the morning (our bedroom is our living room).
It's my cooking timer now. Shouting out "Alexa, set a timer for 9 minutes" when putting chicken on the grill is far simpler than walking all the way to the kitchen and using a food timer.
I have been using one for a few months. It's still a novelty at this point, but it's a neat device. The voice recognition is great and it works from very far away. I can change songs or adjust volume from 20 feet away with no problems. If nothing else, it works very well as a music player and Bluetooth headset.
The instant answers, unit conversions, etc. are convenient in the kitchen, although they could improve on this front. Alexa doesn't always understand the question and seems to screw up sports scores and schedules pretty frequently. It seems about as good as Siri but not as good as Cortana. I have never used Google Now so I can't compare to that.
Amazon pushes out frequent updates and integrations with third parties - Audible, Pandora, IFTTT and some home automation systems just to name a few. They definitely seem committed to Alexa.
Overall, I like Alexa. I wouldn't say it has changed my life or anything and I'm not sure how much I would miss it if I didn't have it, but I'm glad I do if you know what I mean. It is definitely still an early adopter device. It will be exciting to see where it goes as they add more features. I already feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie from as recent as the late 90's where I talk to the house computer. Neat stuff.
I can't wait for the times when i would ask my wife "where are my sneakers?" and in 10 minutes amazon would send me email for buying brand new sneakers with drone delivery in 5 minutes.
I mostly use it to ask it the weather forecast and control my Hue lights (Alexa, turn on the living room lights, dim the office lights to 50% percent, etc).
Rather unexpected, I find I like to ask it to tell me jokes too. it has a rather large library of particularly terrible jokes that I like :)
The shopping list feature is nice when trying to keep things paperless (or at least, I never find my notes). It's now possible to have IFTTT email you the list when you ask what's on your list.
As a bluetooth speaker, I don't find myself using it a whole lot, but has a wide range of options from TuneIn to IHeartRadio and there is a lot on Amazon streaming too.
I'm looking forward to seeing them add new features and they come out with new features about every single month.
It's not the most neccessary thing by any means, but it is a nice step towards Jetson-land and it's fun to have around.
It also learns voices better over time and has a nice "training" app in the phone app I'd suggest using 3-4 times. Neat stuff.
Oh - Alexa support is super awesome, most questions get answered by real humans super fast, and then they implement some of those things!
I have two at my house and absolutely love them for the simplest tasks: weather, time, timer & shopping list. It's other features are fun, but I haven't found more useful than grabbing my smartphone.
Good! I signed up for the beta on a whim and got one just in time for Christmas, so that was a family present to all of us. At first, we spent a lot of time yelling random orders and questions at it, and that was fun. But after a while, it just faded into the background of our living room and became something that Just Works, like the TV and DVR. How much time do you spend consciously thinking about your TV versus taking it for granted? That's how Alexa is for us now.
Our most used apps:
- Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes. (Our new standard kitchen timer)
- Alexa, play [...]. (Lots of music in Amazon Prime.)
- Alexa, turn the lights on. (Interfaces with the Hue lighting system to brighten the living room.)
I could live without it, but I could survive without a lot of the tech that makes everyday life a little easier. I'm glad I don't have to, though.
I was one of the first people to get an Echo when they were offered to prime members at $99 in November 2014. It has quickly become a great device for our family.
Some of our thoughts:
* The integration with third party services has put it into a new realm of usefulness.
* I am still disappointed I cannot tell it to read me a book from anything but Audible. I would love to say, "Read Hamlet from Guttenberg."
* The connection between Echo and Prime Music is sensational. If you like genres of music over specific artists, it really shines.
* If you have kids, the Echo is a blast for them to interact with. Endless questions from your kids is great to hear.
* It would be awesome if they opened it up more. I could see it being a game master for family games of trivia or spelling contests.
* I'd say we use the Echo for 3-4 hours a day with a majority of the time used to stream music. "Amazon, play Kidz Bop 28" is a common refrain.
* When playing scrabble we use it as a timer.
* We've never used it to order anything from Amazon.
* We do use it to compile shopping lists. I was surprised how quickly this became an essential part of our household. So easy to say, "Amazon, add olive oil to shopping list."
* You can choose between Alexa and Amazon as they wake word. We use Amazon since it is easier for the kids to register with the Echo.
* You cannot change the wake word from those two.
* We use the Android app for non voice control and it has gotten much better recently.
* The news function could use a ton of work. I don't want to hear things I am not interested in from NPR.
* It listens to everything. If you happen to mention Amazon in conversation it'll pick it up, even if you are 2 rooms away.
* At $99 it is a device I'd recommend to almost any family. At $179 I couldn't justify buying one.
Anyway, they have a winner for families if the price point was lower. I am very glad we got ours for $99.
This. We use it in our family mostly as a jukebox with occasional Siri-like fun (I'm now in the habit of asking for news updates from NPR every morning).
I got one of these for work with my office decorating budget because I thought it would be cool to hack on it. Maybe even set it up to do silly dev-related tasks like "Alexa, how many users are active right now?" and "Alexa, comment 'looks good' on Janet's pull request."
What I found, though, was that it was a divisive product. 50% of the office thought it was neat, 40% didn't care, and 10% hated it with a surprising passion. Privacy concerns were brought up, but the biggest complaint was just that it was "creepy."
We ended up unplugging it and leaving it in a corner because it wasn't worth making people uncomfortable for a largely useless toy.
The first review about a wife buy Echo for her husband with Parkinson's warms my heart. Its so inspiring to see how technology has such a great impact on people's lives! Definitely would recommend reading as a pick-me-up for the day.
18.543 reviews in 5 days? (19th-23th June) That's a lot.
The customer reviews section was previously hidden during the closed beta test, though the review section was accessible with the right URL and just a few weeks ago there were only 4 mixed reviews.
I wonder how many amazon customers got a free sample as one wrote: "SO happy we got to sample one of these playtoys, first! What a disappointment!"
I really enjoy my 99 dollar Echo. I am also not sure I would have bought it at the higher price. I have had it since last November and still use it daily. I love that they keep slowly adding functionality to expand its uses without overwhelming me. After using it so much at home I often miss it at work. I may have to get one for work at my next Prime renewal date.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|10 years ago|reply
Good:
- The hardware is really well designed.
- Being able to listen to NPR affiliates elsewhere in the country is awesome (Seattle's KUOW affiliate is bad, but my hometown stations of MPR and The Current are great).
- The Prime Music and Pandora integration is generally pretty cool, although the Prime Music selection is a bit thin at times.
- Timers and kitchen measurements are helpful.
Bad:
- The iOS app is absolutely horrendous. Imagine the worst web/native hybrid app that you've ever seen, now set your expectations down another order of magnitude. I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Amazon—especially one that did such an amazing job on the hardware—could create such an utterly horrible mobile companion app.
- The Echo has trouble understanding my girlfriend (a complaint I've heard from a couple other Echo users)
- You call it Alexa, not Echo. The box says Echo, but you will never interact with it as such. Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying: "here's our big feature for iOS 5, it's called Siri, but you'll interact with it by calling it Yoko"?
- No really, the iOS app is awful. Like, I'll go out of my way to avoid ever having to open it.
[+] [-] nkozyra|10 years ago|reply
I think you're looking at this the wrong way.
The product is the iphone, the human-interaction agent is Siri
The product is the echo, the human-interaction agent is Alexa
[+] [-] rsync|10 years ago|reply
Wait, what ?
Never mind the name mismatch - I agree that is odd.
But ... this is quick convenience device for rapid reaction to spoken commands ... and the command is three syllables ?
I understand the need to avoid false positives - waking up and responding to common speech patterns that get used throughout the day that are not directed to the device, but surely you can come up with a two-syllable command that won't generate those.
I have no intention of ever using a device like this in my home, but if I did, 50% more syllables for every interaction would drive me nuts.
[+] [-] atourgates|10 years ago|reply
- It listened to me just fine, but wouldn't listen to my wife. Our dog does the same thing. I think there might be a connection there.
- The sound quality was good for the size, but doesn't compare to some other small bluetooth speakers I've experienced (like the SoundLink Mini) that make me think, "Whoa, is all that sound coming from that tiny thing?"
- Agreed that the iOS app is awful.
- The biggest miss from my perspective was the lack of integration (at least at launch) with a comprehensive streaming service. We had it in the kitchen, and it was a really nice concept to be able to say, "Alexa, play Hotel California by The Eagles" in the middle of cooking dinner, without having to clean off your hands and touch your phone, but really, Alexa could only play a sample of Hotel California by the Eagles, unless you owned it it in your Prime music library. Deeper integration with Spotify or Rdio or something would have fixed this. Maybe it's already been fixed, but if not, that's a fatal flaw.
- The hardware quality, including the remote, was top notch.
- At $100, it could be very compelling for rooms where your hands are busy. I almost kept it just for the garage, so I could use it while working on the car, or working out, or cleaning up. The kitchen is another good option. But the lack of complete music integration, and the fact that I could resell it on eBay and make money, made me give up on it.
[+] [-] coldpie|10 years ago|reply
You're not wrong, but this might have been intentional. I've heard complaints from people with Xbox Ones where the Xbox will suddenly decide to turn on because the owner was having a conversation with a friend and mentioned the word "Xbox." By calling the product Echo, you can have a conversation about the Echo without triggering the activation word. You're almost never going to say "Alexa" without intending to turn on the Echo.
[+] [-] VLM|10 years ago|reply
Could you or someone else chime in with an explanation of how this works? Specifically I see all the promotional material or astroturfing or whatever about how awesome it is for families, and I also see how it links to numerous single individual person services (google calendar, various music services, audible, etc) but I can't figure out how (or if) it handles the 1:n mapping. If I ask it whats on my calendar I really don't want to hear by son's assignment notebook from school, or even something as simple as asking about traffic, my wife and I do not work in the same location, if my wife and I and my son have three separate audible accounts...
As a side issue I have no idea why its so expensive. The hardware looks like my old roku plus a speaker but the cost is that times more than three? I mean on the assumption it would wedge me into the amazon ecosystem, as a bazillion year customer and a prime subscriber, I'd expect it to be free. "Here its free and works with audible now go buy even MORE audible books"
[+] [-] koenigdavidmj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|10 years ago|reply
I thought the idea was you could call it whatever you want in the official version, but the beta just had it set to Alexa?
[+] [-] joshuapants|10 years ago|reply
Um, you say Siri instead of "iPhone" so I think they're doing exactly the same thing as Apple.
[+] [-] malkia|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|10 years ago|reply
You can configure what you call it. It doesn't have to be Alexa.
> The iOS app is absolutely horrendous.
The iOS isn't awesome but it's not horrible. I guess you haven't tried the home automation iOS apps like WeMo yet?
[+] [-] jscheel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ranman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ranman|10 years ago|reply
I like the idea that this is backed by a service that has an API that can call out to other APIs. It has an "app store".
I think you can sign up for the SDK already: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo
It's one of the only devices in my home I use as often as my cell phone.
I look forward to the day when I can push information back to the echo using apps like tripit:
"ranman your flight is leaving in 2 hours, should I call an uber or give you the train schedule?"
"It's lunch time, want to see what's in the neighborhood you haven't tried recently?"
"You have an incoming skype call from X"
"Welcome home, want me to turn on the news?"
The only downside is that it depends on always on and fast connectivity.
I'm not particularly concerned about the privacy of it all (I do recognize the concerns other people have) but I would be interested in learning more about how the privacy is handled.
The other interesting device in this category is the Jibo: https://www.jibo.com/ but I haven't seen any of the details on the developer side of that yet.
[+] [-] Trisell|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhino369|10 years ago|reply
Now you can say that "hey they could be secreting recording you anyway."
Sure, but so could any internet connected device with a microphone or speakers.
[+] [-] ddlatham|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxmcd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|10 years ago|reply
it's stupendous.
[+] [-] dogma1138|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fastball|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buffportion|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedanimator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nogridbag|10 years ago|reply
Once they open up the SDK, there's lots of things I'd love to add which will make my life easier.
It was a great buy at $99. I would have even liked to buy an additional one for my bedroom. At $179 it's a tougher sell - I would have to think twice about it. I also noticed they're selling the remote control separately for an extra $30.
[+] [-] koala_man|10 years ago|reply
I ended up putting mine in the bedroom. The only commands that I've found weekly+ uses for are:
- Turn the lights on/off
- What time is it
And that's pretty much it. Only the latter works reliably.
I would have definitely have used the home automation more, but the Amazon recommended WeMo switch that works perfectly from the WeMo app only works half the time from Echo.
It's a fun toy though. Guests always get a kick out of "Alexa, tell me a joke" and "Alexa, play some party music", and I still enjoy the occasional futuristic feeling when I e.g. listen to something interesting on NPR in my car and have Echo take over when I get home.
However, as much as I enjoy NLP and early adoption, I really struggle to find practical, non-gimmick uses for it.
[+] [-] SimpleXYZ|10 years ago|reply
I really wish it supported something like json, allowing me to get an audio of anything on the web.
[+] [-] Navarr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rylee|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseyf|10 years ago|reply
I like it for $99, but not for double that.
[+] [-] jm4|10 years ago|reply
The instant answers, unit conversions, etc. are convenient in the kitchen, although they could improve on this front. Alexa doesn't always understand the question and seems to screw up sports scores and schedules pretty frequently. It seems about as good as Siri but not as good as Cortana. I have never used Google Now so I can't compare to that.
Amazon pushes out frequent updates and integrations with third parties - Audible, Pandora, IFTTT and some home automation systems just to name a few. They definitely seem committed to Alexa.
Overall, I like Alexa. I wouldn't say it has changed my life or anything and I'm not sure how much I would miss it if I didn't have it, but I'm glad I do if you know what I mean. It is definitely still an early adopter device. It will be exciting to see where it goes as they add more features. I already feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie from as recent as the late 90's where I talk to the house computer. Neat stuff.
[+] [-] cromantin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpdehaan2|10 years ago|reply
I mostly use it to ask it the weather forecast and control my Hue lights (Alexa, turn on the living room lights, dim the office lights to 50% percent, etc).
Rather unexpected, I find I like to ask it to tell me jokes too. it has a rather large library of particularly terrible jokes that I like :)
The shopping list feature is nice when trying to keep things paperless (or at least, I never find my notes). It's now possible to have IFTTT email you the list when you ask what's on your list.
As a bluetooth speaker, I don't find myself using it a whole lot, but has a wide range of options from TuneIn to IHeartRadio and there is a lot on Amazon streaming too.
I'm looking forward to seeing them add new features and they come out with new features about every single month.
It's not the most neccessary thing by any means, but it is a nice step towards Jetson-land and it's fun to have around.
It also learns voices better over time and has a nice "training" app in the phone app I'd suggest using 3-4 times. Neat stuff.
Oh - Alexa support is super awesome, most questions get answered by real humans super fast, and then they implement some of those things!
[+] [-] sparrish|10 years ago|reply
And I've not had to answer a single "Dad, how do spell..." question since we received it.
[+] [-] smackfu|10 years ago|reply
* "Alexa, what's the weather look like?" (every day)
* "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes"
* "Alexa, what time is it?" (we don't have any clocks in our living room.)
* "Alexa, play some 80's music." (this works great if you just want some music playing)
Also, it's a pretty good Bluetooth speaker.
Yes, you can do most of this stuff on an iPhone with Siri, but this kind of button-less voice control is just better.
[+] [-] techscruggs|10 years ago|reply
For me, it's a more useful Siri.
[+] [-] CrunchyJams|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstrauser|10 years ago|reply
Our most used apps:
- Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes. (Our new standard kitchen timer)
- Alexa, play [...]. (Lots of music in Amazon Prime.)
- Alexa, turn the lights on. (Interfaces with the Hue lighting system to brighten the living room.)
I could live without it, but I could survive without a lot of the tech that makes everyday life a little easier. I'm glad I don't have to, though.
[+] [-] pgrote|10 years ago|reply
Some of our thoughts:
* The integration with third party services has put it into a new realm of usefulness.
* I am still disappointed I cannot tell it to read me a book from anything but Audible. I would love to say, "Read Hamlet from Guttenberg."
* The connection between Echo and Prime Music is sensational. If you like genres of music over specific artists, it really shines.
* If you have kids, the Echo is a blast for them to interact with. Endless questions from your kids is great to hear.
* It would be awesome if they opened it up more. I could see it being a game master for family games of trivia or spelling contests.
* I'd say we use the Echo for 3-4 hours a day with a majority of the time used to stream music. "Amazon, play Kidz Bop 28" is a common refrain.
* When playing scrabble we use it as a timer.
* We've never used it to order anything from Amazon.
* We do use it to compile shopping lists. I was surprised how quickly this became an essential part of our household. So easy to say, "Amazon, add olive oil to shopping list."
* You can choose between Alexa and Amazon as they wake word. We use Amazon since it is easier for the kids to register with the Echo.
* You cannot change the wake word from those two.
* We use the Android app for non voice control and it has gotten much better recently.
* The news function could use a ton of work. I don't want to hear things I am not interested in from NPR.
* It listens to everything. If you happen to mention Amazon in conversation it'll pick it up, even if you are 2 rooms away.
* At $99 it is a device I'd recommend to almost any family. At $179 I couldn't justify buying one.
Anyway, they have a winner for families if the price point was lower. I am very glad we got ours for $99.
[+] [-] arturadib|10 years ago|reply
As Jack Dorsey said, Echo is the future.
[+] [-] fishtoaster|10 years ago|reply
What I found, though, was that it was a divisive product. 50% of the office thought it was neat, 40% didn't care, and 10% hated it with a surprising passion. Privacy concerns were brought up, but the biggest complaint was just that it was "creepy."
We ended up unplugging it and leaving it in a corner because it wasn't worth making people uncomfortable for a largely useless toy.
[+] [-] phinkle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] click170|10 years ago|reply
The other person has now lost their reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home and might not even know it.
[+] [-] frik|10 years ago|reply
The customer reviews section was previously hidden during the closed beta test, though the review section was accessible with the right URL and just a few weeks ago there were only 4 mixed reviews.
I wonder how many amazon customers got a free sample as one wrote: "SO happy we got to sample one of these playtoys, first! What a disappointment!"
[+] [-] uslic001|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonswords82|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsugarman|10 years ago|reply