My new best friend in the kitchen is Alexa, also known as the Amazon Echo.
She plays my favorite music, answers quirky questions, reports weather, and was amazingly simple to set up. The 360 sound is very good and carries well throughout the downstairs area–and even carries well into the back patio and yard area.
Alexa’s size is both elegant and unobstrusive, with a diameter of a little over 3 inches and a height of less than 10 inches with a responsive circlular blue light on top that shows when she is awake. The volume is controlled by either gently twirling the top or using the magnetic remote control, which we mounted on the wall. I’ve played with distance commands, which seem to work pretty well from up to 15 or 20 feet away, as long as there isn’t a wall separating us–which can cause Alexa to misunderstand requests.
Overall, Alexa is a great 360 speaker system that plays like Pandora and also serves as a pretty cool personal assistant who not only answers a fairly wide array of questions, but is also provides sports info, alarm and time services. And because the Amazon Echo pulls everything (except the physical controls) from the cloud, I am hoping Amazon will expand information offerings. Alexa will not, for example, give me stock quotes or finanacial information, which would be nice–and I am sure there are numerous other holes in Alexa’s body of knowledge.
She does have a sense of humor, though. When Alexa did not understand my request for a BP stock quote, hubby Mike called her a dumb ass. Alexa’s response? “That’s not very nice to say.” Ask a religious question, and you might get a straight answer–or a suggestion to search for books on religion at Amazon.
I signed up on Amazon’s wait list for the Echo as soon as I heard about it and was rewarded months later with notice of delivery. This is a review I would have put on Amazon’s site, but they’re not allowing it yet. I was fortunate as an early wanna-be-buyer to get my Echo for $99.00 which I think is a raging bargain. Still think it’s an outstanding buy at the current price of $199.00 for Amazon Prime members.
Have you tried it yet?
