On November 6, 2014, Amazon surprised the market unveiled its latest device, the Amazon Echo and let people sign up for a special $99 pre-release price instead of the stand $199. Some people have already received their units as early as November 20, but our managed to get here on December 9. Let's jump right in and see what the Amazon Echo can do and if it's right for you.
Features and Design
The Amazon Echo is designed to sit in the middle of the living area where it can be easily accessed by any member of the household. It's a cylindrical device that requires to be plugged into a power outlet to always be on and comes with a remote control to control volume and skip. It connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and can be used as a standard bluetooth speaker for your phone or tablet. Here's a list of key features and specs:
- Dimensions: 3.27" Diameter x 9.25" Height
- Speakers: 2.5" Woofer and 2" Tweeter
- 7 Microphone Array
- Light and Volume Ring
- Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
- Other Features:
- Far Field Voice Recognition
- Amazon Store Integration
- 360° Omni-Directional Sound
- Just Ask "Alexa"
- News, Weather, and Information
- Music
- Alarms, Timers, and Lists
- Questions and Answers
- Automatic Updates
Software
The Amazon Echo app is used to control your Echo, even when away from home. It should be noted that there is not currently a native Amazon Echo app for iOS, but a web-based app you can pin to your home screen.
Out of the Box
There's a few things to note right out of the box. The unit comes in a plain black box with an orange inner lining, similar to other recent Kindle Fire tablets and products. It's bigger than I was anticipating, but has a nice quality heft to it. It has a nice feel to it overall and the volume wheel has the right amount of resistance to it. Other than that, it's not something you're going to be handling a lot anyways since it's plugged into the wall at all times.
One other thing to note was the controller that comes packaged with the Echo. The controller itself is pretty standard with play/pause, skip, and volume buttons with a voice button so you don't have to always call out Alexa. What was interesting with the remote was the mount for it which has a sticky backing to attach to a place with easy access (I picked my nightstand). The remote attaches to the mount magnetically which is a nice little feature.
Really, the biggest problem I had, especially in a two-story home, was to pick a spot in the home where it would be used most. We eventually settled on our bedroom.
Setup
Setup was incredibly simple with the accompanying app. The first step is to connect to the Echo's Wi-Fi directly from your device, it shows up as a hotspot. Once connected, you return to the app to enter your local Wi-Fi settings that will be used from here on out. In the Echo app, you will all set all of your music accounts that will be used with our Amazon Echo including: Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. In all, it wasn't long before we were up and running, maybe 5 minutes tops.
Feature Testing and Day-to-Day Use
Really, it was hard to figure out where to start since I'm not used to verbalizing my internet questions, even in the age of Siri (the iPhone voice assistant), Cortana (Microsoft's voice assistant), and Google Now. It just feels weird to open air your questions. Actually, it was quite humorous at times because even with my wife knowing what the Echo did, she would still yell "What?" from another room.
I also found that saying "Alexa" to get the Echo's attention was sometimes hit-or-miss and would not always recognize I was trying to address it (her). I found using the remote with the button far more convenient.
If you have Amazon Prime, playing music is a cinch. Just tell the Echo to play a genre, artist, album, or song and it will happily play you the tunes you desire. Though I'm not sure how useful this would be if you did not have Amazon Prime since it pulls it library from Prime Music (at least with how ours is set up). This was also hit-or0miss and would sometimes play something completely different than what I had asked for. We'll see if it gets better with time.
Asking day-to-day questions was where it struggled the most. We have gotten so used to asking Siri sports questions and directions. Without using the accompanying app, there are no visual clues as to what it's thinking. Almost 4 out of 5 questions were answered with it asking me to check my Echo app for a web search. I found this to be especially true with any current events including sports and politics.
Inside the app, you can tell the Echo if it answered each question correctly or not to help it learn, though I do not have a method to quantify how well it works if it does.
The Echo has other interesting utilities including the ability to set the alarm, though only one for now unfortunately and one day at a time (no repeating). There's also a news portal on the app where you can tell the Echo where you want to get your daily news update. This features actually works quite well and I could see how it would be nice for those who listen to the news when they get up. Though I imagine there are many like myself who wake up before other members of the household and this feature simply is not an option.
I will say this, if you are a house of small children such as myself, once they learn the magic words to turn the Echo on, prepare yourselves for the kids to go berserk asking it all sorts of ridiculous questions (most of which will default to web searches) and asking it to play all sorts of silly songs. Fortunately, you can set a mute with a button on top of the Echo itself so that it will ignore being woke to answer questions and play your music, though I find this to be self-defeating in purpose.
As a bluetooth speaker it works perfectly fine and works as well as you'd expect. The sound quality is crisp and clear and pairing is as simple as bluetooth gets. I am no audiophile, but I can tell you the sound is very pleasant and holds it's own in a sea of high-end bluetooth speakers.
One more thing to note is the misfires. I was surprised at how many times I'd have to repeat saying "Alexa" to get it's attention. Then the time to give a command seems too short before it errors out. You had better darn well thought your question through before you ask it, otherwise there's no prayer of it being answered. I was also surprised at how many times it has thought I or my family was addressing it resulting in odd, sometimes humorous, outcomes.
One final piece to mention is that of purchases. I simply have not been able to successfully order anything from the Echo. I may be doing it wrong, but even still, I would have thought this would have been more intuitive since Amazon wants you to be tightly engrained into their environment. I could not add things to my wishlist or even ask what the deals of the day were. It's not a good platform for buying things off Amazon which is a bit of a disappointment.
Final Thoughts
Really, I wanted to like it, and I want to like it, but I still struggle to understand exactly what problem it solves. I feel like my phone is able to do all these tasks but more discreetly, accurately, and frankly more simply.
I do have to hand it to Amazon however for trying to break the mold and engineering something completely different. It certainly has it's merits and has its potential. But overall, the result simply feels half-baked and gives a product that doesn't live up to it's full potential.
As a bluetooth speaker it works fine and as a simple music playing device it certainly does well, but beyond that it simply struggles to find it's niche in our home. Perhaps future software releases will make it more usable, but until then I feel the Amazon Echo falls flat. It's unfortunate because it a well-engineered and beautiful device that is help back by some major issues with software, which is why I remain hopeful for the Amazon Echo. I also have to remind myself that it's still in a bit of a beta phase. I will keep you all updated as software improves.
