9 replies to this topic

[Nigel Tufnel]

Anybody out there have any feedback on the Amazon Echo?  They're $50 off today for Prime Day, and you can save another $20 with an Amazon credit card.  I'm thinking about trying one out.

[DJ MC]

My parents just bought an Echo.

 

It's neat.

[RShack]

My parents just bought an Echo.

 

It's neat.

 

But will it still be neat after a week or two?

[Mark Carver]

I've got the Amazon Tap and it is very neat. It's portable and take it whenever I'm outside working in the yard or shed. No issues with receiving the wi-fi signals outside.

 

Definitely looking forward to see what Google comes up with.

[DJ MC]

But will it still be neat after a week or two?

The goofy "Alexa, tell me a joke" stuff will wear off. But once I get them things to hook up to it, like stuff to connect the lights ("Alexa, clap on") and the TV ("Alexa, find Sleepless In Seattle"), that is where it can get some long-term value.

[Nigel Tufnel]

I ended up buying an Echo soon after my original post, and I recently bought the smaller model, the Echo Dot.

 

For me, the music aspect has been the best part.  You can play anything from Prime Music just by asking, and I also ripped all of my CD's to MP3 files and loaded them into my Amazon Music Library, along with any digital files I already had.  So now I can just say, "Alexa, play music library" and it plays random tracks from my library until I tell it to stop.  Using voice commands to turn on/off or dim the lights is pretty cool, too.  And in the morning, it's nice to get a weather and traffic report while I'm tying my shoes.  And it will play Pandora and Spotify, too.

 

The Echo is $180, and the Dot is $90.  The only advantage of the Echo over the Dot is that the speaker is much better, but the Dot makes up for that by having bluetooth and aux outputs, so you can hook it up to a home theater system (the Echo has bluetooth in, but no audio outputs of any kind).  

 

I've found that bluetooth is the better connection method for the Dot, because if you plug in an aux cable, it turns off the Dot's internal speaker.  I'm not going to turn on my HT receiver just to ask about the weather, so this more or less ruins the convenience aspect of the Dot, which is its whole point.  But with bluetooth, the Dot connects to the receiver if it's on, and uses the internal speaker if not.  Best of both worlds.  I'd only pay the extra money for an Echo if I was going to listen to music, but planned to put it in a room without a receiver/speakers.

 

If you go to the Dot page on Amazon, I think it's set up where you're supposed to have an Echo first - I ordered my Dot by saying "Alexa, order Echo Dot" while watching an O's game.  It showed up 2 days later.  But I think there are supposedly direct ordering links out there if you search.

 

There's also the Tap, but I don't have one, so I don't know much about it.

[Nigel Tufnel]

The Echo is $50 off today for Prime Day.

[DJ MC]

Right now, we're using the Echo to play Jeopardy. That's fun, actually having someone tell me I'm right when I get the right answers (not that I didn't already know I was getting all the answers right ).

[RShack]

Right now, we're using the Echo to play Jeopardy. That's fun, actually having someone tell me I'm right when I get the right answers (not that I didn't already know I was getting all the answers right ).

 

(That's so sad...)

 

Aw, hell, DJ... if you need somebody to tell you you're right, I can do that... you don't need to buy a machine to get that...  

[Nigel Tufnel]

The second generation Echo Dot comes out in about a month - price is down to $50.

 

https://www.amazon.c...82-f17b15eddce1