Amazon Echo (1st Generation)

Firstly, there are myriad very PRECIOUS and helpful reviews of this product with Alexa's owner posing for a picture with the device, clearly people love it. I would give Echo four stars for concept, because I feel the future will expand on the existing skills and features functions -- I am very excited about what may be coming moving forward, though there are definitely significant limitations over what I expected of the device. At the same time the unit needs some improvement which would require modifications to hardware (sound quality for music) and as such I can only give this model three stars. This unit was of a size I could easily place in a central spot in my home. It's attractive and I like the look of the blue ombre light when Alexa is listening. Alexa has a number of skills which include lots of fun games and as such she does well with entertainment factor, however she's limited in more functional terms for use as a personal assistant, music player, and cooking helper. I'll give some examples of what I love and what I dislike: By far my FAVORITE and most practical functions for Alexa so far -- I can order papertowels and other things I've purchased from amazon in the past, easily. I'm a bit nervous my kids may try to buy things however being able to order papertowels while you're thinking of it in the kitchen elbow deep in chicken guts, grabbing the last paper towel roll is REALLY very very handy. Infinite kudos for this function. << 8/28 I also used this to order a new item and it was pretty easy to do so -- it offered the top listing and when I said no - it gave me a second option which was perfect. Another REALLY SUPER SWEET function I never even thought of when I first purchased Alexa was her ability to integrate with Insteon devices (managed by an insteon hub) to control things like lighting fixtures. A busy mom with three seven year olds, knowing I don't have to get off the couch to turn off the kitchen light I forgot, dim my bedside lamps, or even turn on a hall light or the kids lamps so they aren't scared walking down the hallway to bed is REALLY stellar. Snaps for this function, it's totally sweet and very easy to use. I was also able to program lights to come on when i'm out of town, to keep wicked robber types on their toes ;) For the most part voice recognition does really well, I've used the unit as far away as 30 feet down a hallway. As the volume of the music is turned up it becomes very difficult for Alexa to hear you which presents some challenges. I found if I turn up volume as few as 2 times Alexa begins to have difficulty hearing me from a few feet away. If I turn up the volume three or more times it's impossible for Alexa to hear me even when I walk right over to the unit, I have to use the button on top to get her to take input. This isn't convenient considering I originally purchased Echo mostly for listening to music while cooking. << 8/26 I purchased the remote ($29) which allows me to communicate with Alexa from another room on the far side of the house, or catch her attention while listening to loud music. You have to press and hold a button to use this function. It was easy to setup, and i'm glad to have it ...however Alexa's hands free integration was part of her appeal. IMHO if a remote is needed, it should've come with the unit. Also regarding voice recognition, sometimes my kids can get Alexa to do things like open a box of cats, however she has a harder time hearing their high pitched fast voices than she does mine (i'm an adult female) and as such often she fails to execute their commends. Voice recognition is a challenge, especially when the speaker in use and yet-- one of the primary function for which i purchased the device is music playing!! << 8/29 sadly on occasion I say something like "Girl's Lamp On" she'll come back with sass and tell me "I could not find a device in your account that matches "Merle's Lamp" << ((you've gotta be kidding me)). My best guess was the air purifier was kicked up to high speed and was creating a little white noise in the area when this happened, my air purifier auto adjusts. Also I setup a group called "Kids" to link all the kid lights together. Earlier in the day i'd managed to get her to turn "Kids On" and "kids off" or "kids 10%" without problem. Onetime I asked her to turn "Kids On" and she said "Would you like me to add the family holiday station to your play list?" <<(( WHAT?? I have no idea how she jumped to that conclusion)) Sound quality, Alexa sounds just great as she's speaking to you. However, with the advancement we've made in the last decade in speaker technology i'm REALLY surprised a unit of this size -- meant for listening to music offers very little in the way of sound quality. The audio is fairly flat and non-dimensional. There's no bass, not much mid, everything is treble and fairly flat It's really a lousy way to listen to music if you're a fan of great sound quality. After all- I can tether a $40 Bluetooth speaker to my cellphone and get sound quality to trump Echo's 10 times over. This being said, I looked around for a way to adjust Echo's speaker settings -- I couldn't find anything. Am I going to need to ditch Echo as my sound system? Probably so. At least I can listen to something in a pinch when i'm desperate, i'd probably be better off playing it on my cellphone's speaker. Sound function, Alexa can play music from Spotify, Pandora, or prime ... and more. I've used this for Pandora and Spotify both. Her default is to look for the music you want on Prime, then she errors out and you have to ask her specifically to play from Spotify or Pandora to get music to start. This could be made more convenient for the user, imho. I really rather just say play cold play and have it ask if I want it on prime, Spotify, or Pandora. << 8/28 you can update your preferred music app within Alexa's interface ... which is helpful. For skills, I really hoped to use Alexa not only for music but also to help with cooking. I use my phone and a webbrowser frequently while cooking to look up recipes and cooking temps. I'm constantly having to wash my hands to unlock my phone and look up the next step of a recipe. I had hoped that Alexa could give me the required oven temp for a prime rib or a quick cook time for chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps even a recipe for something as simple as boiled eggs. By default Alexa can give you the doneness temps of various meats and not much more. I installed every single cooking skill I could get my hands on and I STILL cannot get something as simple as a recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a baked potato, or even oven roast a potato!. It took installing an egg app to learn how to boil an egg -- so after installing every single cooking app available -- all Alexa can manage is help cooking eggs and give me the doneness temp for meat. IMHO this is an epic fail, and as such I plan to request a decent cooking skill be added in the feature request section of the app. For use as a personal assistant, one way in which Alexa could be of significant help is managing my calendar. Unfortunately at present Alexa only supports calendar integration with google accounts. I have three Microsoft accounts, one for work, and two personal. I have NO interest in manually duplicating entries from three Microsoft calendars into a google account i'll never use simply to leverage Alexa. I requested this feature and I was told it's in the works. Once this is in place if it works well I could see myself elevating Alexa's function by a full star easily. It'd be a huge help if Alexa could read or update my calendars that sync automatically with my phone and PC. For use creating alarms. Alexa will set a recurring alarm for a specific date and time, however she cannot set a one time alarm outside of 24 hours from the current date/time. I scheduled an alarm to remind me to take out the trash every Thursday -- however the alarm simply goes off and you have NO clue at all what it's for. It would be much more helpful if Alexa said 'Don't forget to take out the trash' or when asked while playing the alarm would give notes on the alarm. Nope-- alarm setting it's a pretty simple and limited function. I'll be requesting a feature update for this. For use creating one time appointments - I tried to set a reminder for February 23rd to tell my best friend happy birthday and for Sept 4th to buy a present for the triplets birthday. Alexa wasn't sure what to do with this (possibly because she's not integrated into my calendar) so she added a line to my to do list that says 'sept 4th kids birthday buy present'. There are two ways to access this list, one through the alexa app and the other by asking alexa what to do. There was no specific function to ask what's on my to do list for today, and as such Alexa doesn't make for an exceptional personal assistant. Internet Search Function: I asked for information about pink flamingos this morning so the kids and I could learn something. Alexa FLUNG into a history of some bar or restaurant called "The Flamingo". When I clarified "Tell me more detail about pink flamingos on wikapedia" she dove into the high level (a wading bird yada yada, x species in North America, x in Y region). I had to ask her for more a few different ways to get more information but I couldn't get her to give me more, she simply repeated the part about how many species existed. The wikapedia has more about the diet of this animal etc and I had to pull up the article on my phone to get what I wanted to know. As a general rule I struggle to get the information I really want from Alexa, unless i'm using a skill say to inquire about space. To sum it up: Voice recognition 3 of 5 stars Calendaring function 0 of 5 stars To do list function 1 of 5 stars Alarms and alerts 2 of 5 stars Music Sound accessibility and Quality 2 of 5 stars Cooking assistance function 1 of 5 stars Internet Search Function 2 of 5 stars Smart Home function including light control 5 of 5 stars Ordering supplies from Amazon 5 of 5 stars *** Update 8/26 *** I just ordered a Bluetooth speaker that has been certified for integration with Echo ($99) which i'm hoping will enhance my music listening experience, offering richer sounds than Alexa can on her own. If i'm going to be buying a big speaker which is basically much of what Alexa is -- why not make it a good one? I think this enhanced music listening function should have been built into the primary unit. I'd have definitely paid an extra $50 for it. ************ Update on speaker/music function 8/28 **************** It is NOT possible to link a blue tooth speaker with Alexa, as per support (and a support manager). I'm now using my cellphone and a JBL speaker to achieve a better listening experience than I can with Alexa. Which is funny, because I bought Alexa to listen to music. I'd think SURELY it'd make sense to reprogram Alexa to accept Bluetooth requests incoming -- the problem is both alexa and the speaker present themselves and expect someone to manually accept them. Apparently only Echo Dot pairs with external speakers -- because Alexa IS a speaker. Well they aren't selling Echo Dot at present. So boo for me. Wow-- you'd think most people would want not only better sound quality but the ability to use multiple speakers throughout their home to enhance the music experience. I can't wrap my head around it because Echo Dot and Echo can't be all that dissimilar which means Amazon made a cognizant choice NOT to enable external Bluetooth speaker function for Alexa in Echo. I want to make it clear, i'm hardly a genuine audiophile, I've never owned a supped up sound system, and I like the JBL speakers that came with my minivan just fine. However this $179 speaker system sounds worse than the Dknight unit I bought for $20 a couple years back off Amazon?? Epic Fail.