(NEW) Echo Spot - Smart Alarm Clock with Alexa - Black

Really, this thing is the bomb! I have hesitated to embrace Echo. I love Amazon and love everything about Amazon, but I find these products usually disappoint. Like Siri, great idea, but she is just so limited and 1/2 the time she has no idea what I want her to do. I find the pitch of my voice usually doesn't work with voice recognition products. For example, if I call Walgreens to get a refill prescription, I usually have to press all the buttons instead of talking to it, because it gets confused. Part of my problem with Siri and voice prompts is that I want to go too fast and they want to go too slow. I can usually go through the prompts faster than listening to the device say everything, and I usually want to use the speaker-phone as well, that creates some delay. Alexa is totally different. In fact, we talk about her, so we have to call her "the one who won't be mentioned" because even eavesdropping on our conversations in the kitchen she will respond. You don't have to talk loud to her, she just hears you. The hardest thing for my husband to adjust to is when talking to Siri, you have to wait for Siri to respond. With Alexa, you just say what you want. You don't have to get her attention with "Hey Alexa!" You just say, "Alexa drop in on Nathan's room" and instantly you are in a speaker conversation with your son upstairs. The quaIity is nice! No one has to raise their voice to speak in them, just a natrual voice conversation. I actually bought these to be an intercom system in my house. If you have ever priced out an intercom system it is incredibly expensive! Also, all the reviews on Amazon are horrible for every intercom system available except for Nucleus, which is $100 bucks a room. For years I have been looking for something. We have a landline cordless phone system in my house that I have been trying to use, but it rings in their rooms and they typically ignore it instead of answer it because they don't even know how to use regular phones anymore! For $30 bucks a room you get all this... -Drop in on your kids' room, you can hear everything they are doing! -Call your kids down to dinner without yelling! -Really! No more yelling in the house, no more "COMING!!!" response. Just "hey, dinner is ready... ok mom, I'll be right down." -No more excuses about why they need their phones in their room at night. Dots can just play any playlist they have in Prime music, Spotify or Pandora. -No more excuses about why they need their phones as alarm clocks. Dots can set alarms. -No more excuses about why they didn't turn their phone in at night. You can set a reminder to tell them to turn their phones into your room at 9pm! -If you are in your room at night and you can hear they are still up, you can drop into their room and tell them to go to bed. You don't have to get up! Plus this thing does millions of other things! In the kitchen, we have the Echo Show. The speaker quality is good. You can have it play any music you want. "Alexa, play some dinner music" and she picks a nice play list. "Alexa, play some calm music" and she picks a relaxing playlist. "Alexa play the Hamilton soundtrack" and she pulls up the soundtrack and plays it, while displaying the words. What could be easier??? I really wanted the Show for recipes in the kitchen so I didn't have to go back to my computer in the office (I know, lazy!). You can say "Alexa, what can I make with chicken and spinach?" And she'll pull up recipes and even videos of the recipes. Speaking of lazy, this thing is great. I have the Spot in my room. When it wakes me up in the morning I ask it to give my the daily briefing. It tells me what is on my calendar for the day, what the weather is like outside, what the top news of the day is and what the traffic is like to work. The only thing I wish it could do that it doesn't is have a battery so I could take it into the bathroom with me in the morning and listen to all that while I am getting ready. Literally, we have had this for 1 day in our house, so I know it can do way more than those things, but for just that it was worth the investment. Today I ordered 2 more dots. One for my office and one for the basement. Now, in every room I can have Alexa do things for me. We don't have any smart lights or appliances, but maybe we will get some. I can tell it to add things to my todo list as I randomly think of them during the day. I can tell it to add things to my shopping list as I am looking in the refrigerator. I can put things in my Amazon cart as I walk around the house instead of running to the computer and adding it to my cart. Literally, I do almost all my shopping (outside of groceries) through Amazon, so I love having this handy device. You can even order through Alexa. I just like putting things in my cart and reviewing it later. On the Spot specifically, the graphics are nice. When it does the daily briefing it actually brings up the CNN anchor in the display. It randomly shows things like the weather. You can do voice/video calls with it. The video between the Spot and the Show is nice. For the money though, the dots work great in the kids' rooms. I don't really need to see them. I just need to speak with them without yelling! If you are hesitating or on the fence, get one. I can't believe I waited this long! The technology has finally caught up. It really works!