When Amazon announced the Echo connected speaker, there was speculation about how it would work in terms of integrating with Amazon and the larger web. Reviews came out after the Echo launched, positive or mixed depending on the source. For me that confirmed it was based on personal usage, so after using the Echo I wanted to report our findings.
I was able to take advantage of the Amazon Prime member ‘invite’ to purchase the Echo at a discounted rate ($99 compared to the non-member $199), but really wanted to give my wife a new speaker for our bathroom (which is a pretty huge room) because the little mini speaker she was using wasn’t really any better than just using her phone.
My focus in this quick review is on how this works for an end-user who just wants some music in a room and maybe a little more. I will mention other things such as audio quality, but overall I wanted to highlight some of the reasons that the Echo has quickly become a member of our household and not just another dust-gathering speaker in a corner somewhere.
##Information, music, news, weather, and more—instantly
##Controlled by your voice for hands-free convenience
##Voice recognition hears you from across the room
##Connected to the cloud so it’s always getting smarter
Five Reasons the Amazon Echo Has Earned a Prized Spot in Our Home
1. Alexa: – voice command has come a long way with Siri, Cortana and Google Now, but they are all still fairly limited. The key is context – the broader the command set, the greater the chance for misinterpretation. Amazon’s Alexa has a narrower vocabulary, but is incredibly efficient at dealing with your commands. Sure there is some clear distinctions – if you want music from a certain playlist, you say something like “Alexa? Shuffle Playlist Mike” and she would reply “shuffling music from your playlist Mike”. If you mis-order the words, you won’t get the desired result – so you learn quickly.
2. Music and More than Music: – the obvious primary use of the Echo is to play music. The intrinsic control system is based around Amazon music – so Prime Music (assuming you have Prime), Amazon MP3 purchases, and music you uploaded. The ability to transfer my iTunes library to the Amazon music cloud and create a bunch of playlists to work by voice control is a joy.
3. Information Central: – the ability to walk into a room and say ‘Alexa, what’s the news?’ and get an NPR news report, sports summary and local weather forecast is such a wonderful thing. Seriously – every night when my wife and I go in to brush our teeth one of us chats up Alexa about news and weather, and we get a great overview of events and the 24-hour forecast. If we want more specific information – sports, 7-day forecast, etc – we just ask.
4. Growing integration – Aside from IHeartRadio and TuneIn radio, the recent update brings voice control over Bluetooth for your phone playing music from iTunes, Spotify or Pandora! The new update also gets responses more quickly and recognizes more words and makes fewer errors. It definitely seems like Amazon is positioning the Echo as the first of a series of devices looking for a central place in your home entertainment center.
5. Multi-Device Pairing – Sometimes all you want to do is stream something from your phone to a speaker. And since you get an intelligent pairing service with Alexa, it allows you to connect iOS and Android devices, and you can always link-up from your Amazon tablets. The other day Lisa wanted to play a specific song I hadn’t uploaded to Amazon yet, so she connected by Bluetooth. An hour or so later I was using my Kindle Fire HDx and connected quickly and easily – too often speakers get very picky about pairing, but not the Echo!
Three Reasons You Might Want to Give Amazon Echo a Pass for Now
1. You Don’t Have Prime: Let me be blunt – if you aren’t a loyal Prime user, don’t even consider this. Everything about this ties into the Amazon ecosystem – you can pair with iOS or Android phones, but the greatest breadth of connectivity comes with Amazon services and devices such as the Kindle Fire.
2. You only want a speaker: For the full price of $199 you can get a better speaker. In fact, this weekend someone asked me about this, and for the same full price you could get the Logitech UE Boom, Jawbone Jambox or Bose SoundLink Mini. All of these are awesome Bluetooth speakers that lose the Alexa controls in exchange for better sound.
3. You like portability: in what seems like quite the odd choice, you need to have the Echo plugged in all the time. Compare with my beloved iLoud which has several hours of battery life. So if you need a speaker to carry with you – look elsewhere.
Head to Amazon and check it out – see if Alexa and the Echo are a pair you want in your house!
My wife made it clear – the Amazon Echo is one of her surprise favorite Christmas gifts! Check out this quick video I made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gTqLEovAb2A