Review: Echo 2 is still the best at what it does, but there’s room for improvement

November 3, 2017 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

Last updated: 11/16/2017

Our Amazon Echo 2 rating:

The Echo 2 is still the best at what it does, but there’s little need to toss your gen. 1 for it

TL;DR: The new Echo is great, but if you’ve got a gen 1. Echo then there isn’t much reason to upgrade. There were some problems at launch with audio quality and Spotify Connect, but they seem to be resolved now.

11/16/2017 update [Spotify Connect problem resolved]: our Spotify Connect / Echo 2 connection problem appears to be resolved by updating to the version of the Spotify app released 2 days ago (11/14/2017). The original problem was that our new Echo 2 was not showing as a device that Spotify could connect to, even though our old Echo and our Tap (placed next to it) would show in the list of available devices. We could, however, give Alexa the command to play a playlist from Spotify – the problem seemed to be specific to seeing the Echo 2 device in the Spotify app.

11/10/2017 update [poor audio resolved]: Right after its October 31, 2017 launch, the Echo 2 suffered from audio quality problems that inspired a slew of negative reviews on Amazon.com. These problems were fixed with a software update that did result in a noticeable improvement in the Echo 2’s audio quality. The software version ending in 2320 was the “poor audio” version, and this version was replaced with 2420. It’s not a Bose or a Sonos, but it is a lot better since getting this update.

The software version ending in “2320” is the “bad audio” version. When it ends in 2420, you’ve got the update.

Our hands-on Echo 2 Review

Our new Echo 2 in Sandstone. We named it “Clothly”.

We’ve had nearly 2 weeks with our Echo 2 and we love it. The audio problems were resolved in an over-the-air patch that we got last weekend and the device works great otherwise. The microphone is noticeably more responsive (especially compared to the Dot, which seems to have a lot of trouble hearing us over background noise) and it’s really quite nice to look at. It takes up less space on my nightstand and blends in beautifully.

The Echo is still the industry standard for what a smart voice-activated assistant can be.

See the Echo 2 on Amazon.com

Echo 2 compared to the rest of the Echo family

From left to right: Echo 1st gen, Echo Tap, Echo 2, Echo Dot

The HomeUpgraded Echo family: the Echo 1st gen, the rechargeable battery-powered Echo Tap, the brand new Echo 2, and an Echo Dot.

There are basically two reasons to upgrade to an Echo 2 from a 1st gen. Echo:

You use your Echo as a music player and would like the improved audio of the Echo 2
You like the smaller form factor and new body designs

For me, the reason I ordered my Echo 2 was to get the better audio. I use my Echo overnight as a speaker to play soft music while I sleep, and during the day while I work from home. Some days, it’s on for a full 24 hours. The promise of improved audio was enough to get me to buy another one. (It helped that I wanted an Echo for our living room, too – our last room without an Alexa device in it.)

The Echo 2 can get as loud as its predecessor (which is quite loud), with richer bass and clearer quality in the “mid-range” of a song. I’d rank it above the Echo Tap (which I think suffers from an anemic bass response) and just below the lowest-end Bose in terms of richness, clarity, or bass.

In terms of audio quality, from best to worst:

Echo 2 – best audio of them all
Echo (1st generation)
Echo Tap – kind of weak on the bass and overall quality of sound, but it’s portable, so there’s that
Echo Dot – worst audio, but it’s not really marketed as a standalone speaker anyway

We have not tried the Echo Plus yet. Our understanding is it should be slightly better than the Echo 2, since it has the same Dolby speaker with a 0.8″ tweeter instead of the Echo 2’s 0.6″ tweeter.

What’s new with the Echo 2

Smaller body design

The Echo 2 is noticeably smaller and lighter weight than the 1st gen. Echo. It stands about 3″ shorter but is slightly larger in diameter.

The Echo 2’s physical durability is yet to be determined, but with a toddler running around we’ll probably find out soon enough. I once flipped my original Echo off my desk and it cartwheeled right into a wall, but survived with no physical damage (the wall lost some paint in the scuffle).

On the left: our first gen. Echo, purchased October 2015. On the right: our Echo 2, which arrived October 2017.

Lower price

At $99, it’s significantly cheaper than the original Echo, as well as Google Home and the Sonos One.

Updates to the Alexa service itself are free (and they happen passively, no need to initiate any actual update process on your end). If this is your first Echo, you’ve picked the best time to get on board.

3.5mm audio jack

The Echo 2 has an “AUX out” 3.5mm jack on the back near the bottom. This is a nice option to have, so that if you acquire a better speaker and want to hook it up to an Echo, you don’t have to buy an Echo Dot (you can use your Echo 2).

More microphones

The Echo 2 has 7 far-field voice recognition microphones. This helps it hear you over loud music or other noises in the room. I’ve found the Echo 2 to be much better at hearing me than my Echo Dots, and a little better than my 1st gen. Echo.

Interchangeable covers!

Now your Echo can be pretty! I can’t wait to see what the third-party Echo cover designers come up with. The cloth cover that came with my Echo 2 feels firm and snug.

Official shot of the “Sandstone” cloth variant, which is the one we got. It’s beautiful in person.

The Echo 2 is offered in six different body designs. I really like the Sandstone version, it blends into my nightstand decor much better than the large, black plastic original did. I also like that the speaker holes are invisible on the fabric-covered Echo 2 versions, making one solid, nice-looking body design. (The Echo 2 featured in this review is the Sandstone Fabric variant.)

For future reference, here’s how to change the Echo cover:

What’s missing from the Echo 2?

The 1st gen. Echo’s twist ring is gone.

I liked the twist ring because it was a quiet, easy way to adjust the volume in the dark. It wasn’t very granular, though, and I often found myself twisting it back and forth, trying to figure out if I’d twisted it “one” step or “two”.

The power cord only comes in black.

Unlike the white 1st gen. Echo (which some people call a 2nd generation Echo, but it’s not an Echo 2 – it’s just the white variant of the original Echo) which shipped with a white power cord, the Echo 2 power cord is black, no matter cover design you order.

Here’s the black cord and adapter that came with my “white” cloth Echo 2.

Is it worth upgrading to an Echo 2 from a 1st gen. Echo?

I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have $100 burning a hole in your pocket and a use for the old Echo (even if that use is eBaying it – there’s still a good market for used ones). It’s really quite similar. The noticeable changes are the smaller body and the audio improvements.

If you don’t have any Echo device and want one, though, the Echo 2 is a great choice.

So how do you get the best audio with an Echo right now?

If you really want good audio out of an Alexa-enabled device, though, we think you should hook an Echo Dot up to a high-quality speaker of your choosing.

Our top pick right now is the WiFi enabled Sonos PLAY:5 speaker. Yes, it’s expensive, but it works. It works with virtually any music service and it can mix/match songs across different services in its own Sonos app.

The audio quality is perfect. We used ours for months before we hooked an Echo Dot up to it, and it only made a good thing better. Alexa never sounded so good, and it’s great to issue voice-commands to our Sonos. It’s always “on”, too, so you don’t have to physically walk up to it and press the power button before you can send music to it. Spotify can see it as a speaker and stream to it painlessly.

We’re in the middle of moving house (again), but the Sonos is set up, even if it has to sit on a plastic bin.

We love our Sonos – it replaced our Dot + Bose SoundLink Mini II setup, which is more affordable and also offers excellent, room-filling audio, but it falls asleep after 30 minutes of no input. This means you have to walk over to the speaker and press its power button before you can stream music to it. The Dot cannot wake it up. We found this annoying and it’s what ultimately drove us to replace the speaker we had hooked up to our Dot.

They’ve added multi-room play to all Echoes

Some reviews suggest the multi-room play feature is unique to the Echo 2. That is inaccurate – many Echo devices support the new multi-room play feature. This guide from Amazon makes it clear which Echo devices support multi-room play and which services are supported.

At the time of this writing, the supported services are Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. It will not do do multi-room play with Apple Music, Spotify, or from a Bluetooth connection. This may change in the future. You have to do some setup to get it to work.

What could be improved in the Echo 2

We give the Echo 2 four stars out of five because we think there’s room for improvement, especially in regards to music-related features.

Volume should be more granular. Whether I adjust volume directly (using the Echo 2’s on-unit buttons) or use my phone’s volume up/down buttons, the volume goes up/down in big jumps. Since most of my listening is at a low volume, it feels like there’s really just three volume levels: off, too quiet, and too loud (and those are just the bottom 3 levels).

They should add an equalizer. I was surprised there wasn’t an equalizer in the original Echo – and I’m surprised they still haven’t added one for the Echo 2, which was advertised as being the better Echo for listening to music. On the bright side, Google Home just got an equalizer so maybe that will inspire Amazon to add one.

Spotify support is spotty. Since we use our Echoes primarily for listening to music and since we are firmly entrenched in the Spotify ecosystem, it’s hard to overlook these issues.

As of this writing there is:

No multi-room play with Spotify
A bug with Spotify app not being able to keep keep the Echo 2 in its list of available devices for Spotify Connect (11/16/2017 update: this might be fixed, Spotify issued an app update and now I see my Echo 2. I’ll remove this message once I’ve verified that the Echo 2 stays in the list for at least a few days.)
Only “my” Spotify app can Spotify Connect to the various Echoes we have around the house because the Echoes are linked to my Amazon account, even though my partner and I are in an Amazon household together and on the same Spotify family account. We do not have this problem with our Google Home Mini and Sonos WiFi speakers – both of our Spotify apps can see these devices.

The timer is oddly verbose. Set a timer and then ask Alexa how much time is left on the timer, and you get a long spiel that goes something like “You have one timer, a one minute timer, with about 50 seconds left.” It didn’t used to be this way, back when Alexa only supported one timer. Seems like a minor thing but at least we aren’t the only ones who feel this way.

Google’s got better voice-recognition (and a more natural voice). We added a Google Home and a Google Home Mini to our house this year and we think the Google devices are better at understanding a more conversational tone.

With Google, some commands can be chained which is neat (Try something like, “Hey Google, who is Barack Obama?”, then, “Hey Google, what year was he born in?” and it will understand the subject from the previous question. Then, ask “What else happened that year?” and Google Home will rattle off a bunch of events from 1961.)

Alexa’s voice recognition has trained us to speak to our Echoes in a very stilted, robotic way, but the Google Home seemed to have an easier time understanding our questions and requests. Requests include things like the aforementioned Wikipedia query, changing specific Hue lights in our home blue, dim the lights, and play a playlist with Spotify. (We think Google’s voice is more pleasing overall. And “Hey Google, laugh.” is a real treat.)

The bottom line

If you’ve always wanted an Echo, the Echo ecosystem is a great place to be – go for it. By updating the Echo product line, Amazon’s convinced us that they will continue to invest in Alexa and make periodic improvements to the Echo software. The Echo 2 is an improvement over the Echo 1 in nearly every way (the only thing we miss is the twist ring, but we can live without it).

Given the choice between the Echo 2 and the 1st gen. Echo, we would choose the Echo 2. In fact, we didn’t get the Echo Plus even though we’d love to get rid of some of the hubs we have laying around our home because we prefer the smaller, cloth-body look of the Echo 2.

Keep your expectations reasonable – for $100, it’s a great speaker, but if you want the very best audio with your Echo, this isn’t the device that’ll deliver it: what you want is an Echo Dot and a high quality speaker to plug it in to (we use a Sonos PLAY:5 with our Dot and recommend the entire Sonos line).

How to turn a Bose SoundLink Mini into a white noise machine

January 5, 2017 by M.B. Grant 1 Comment

Continuing our series of re-purposing Bose SoundLink speakers, today’s post is about how to use a Bluetooth speaker (such as the popular Bose SoundLink Mini) as a white noise machine!

If you have a Bluetooth speaker laying around and you want to use it as a white noise machine, read on!

Previously: How to use your Bose SoundLink Mini as a soundbar for your TV

This is the speaker I use as a white noise machine, but the techniques I describe in this article can work with virtually any speaker.

When our first baby was born 3 months ago, we quickly realized that white noise helped her (and us) fall asleep and stay that way in our small apartment where everyone can hear everyone else. I have several dedicated white noise machines (my favorite is the LectroFan Jr.) but I thought, why not turn the Bose SoundLink Mini into a white noise machine, too? It’s not like I’m using it for music while I’m trying to get myself or the baby to sleep.

Turns out, this was easy to do – and there’s quite a few ways to do it.

(Don’t feel like you have to do it this way or you have to have this exact equipment – I just didn’t want to be vague and refer to features that may or may not exist on specific Bluetooth speakers.)

What speakers does this work with?

I wrote these steps for the SoundLink Mini because that’s what I use, but there’s really nothing particularly special about it. If you have a speaker with AUX in or Bluetooth pairing capabilities, then one or more of the techniques in this article should work for you.

Since most people want to play white noise for hours on end (ie: overnight), you’ll want your phone plugged in to a power source if you’re streaming over Bluetooth or you’ll want to stream over WiFi so your phone’s audio isn’t tied up (explained more further down in this article). Also, if your speaker is portable and rechargeable, you’ll want keep the speaker plugged in or on its base so that it doesn’t die in the middle of the night.

Technique #1: Stream to the SoundLink over WiFi with an Echo Dot and Spotify Connect

I think this is the best approach. It’s “set it and forget it”, versatile, and easy to use. You don’t have to leave your phone near the speaker or tie up its audio output. However, this technique works only if you have access to a WiFi network, so it’s great for home but not so great for travel. You’ll need an Echo Dot to give the SoundLink WiFi capabilities, since the SoundLink speaker can’t connect to WiFi on its own.

This is my default setup for playing music and white noise over my SoundLink Mini.

What you need

Spotify Premium account with a playlist containing at least one “white noise” song
Amazon Echo Dot
3.5mm AUX cable
A speaker with an AUX input jack (SoundLink Mini and Amazon Tap both have this)

This setup looks complicated compared to the others, but it’s great because you can just stream from an online service (such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, etc) to your speaker without having to tie up your phone’s audio output, draining your phone battery on Bluetooth, having to keep your phone near the speaker, or having any issues with the Bluetooth connection cutting in and out.

To get a setup like mine:

Set up a Spotify playlist of one white noise “song” and set it to loop. This is my Spotify “white noise” playlist
Hook up an Amazon Echo Dot to your Bose SoundLink Mini (via an AUX cable) to give the SoundLink speaker WiFi capabilities. (If you’re trying to stream to a speaker that has built-in WiFi connectivity like a Sonos PLAY:1, you can skip the Echo Dot middleman part.)
Turn on the speaker
Set it to AUX input
Open the Spotify app and select the white noise playlist
Hit play and set the Device to your Echo Dot

The SoundLink does not have WiFi connectivity by itself; you have to hook it up to something like an Echo Dot to give it that power.

Advantages

Easy to set up and use
Streaming over WiFi doesn’t drain phone battery like Bluetooth would
Can still use phone for calls, watching junk on Facebook, recording videos of your pets or kids, etc while the white noise is going
No Bluetooth dropout from interference
Control volume from your phone (or any device with Spotify on your WiFi network)
Play/Pause from your phone (or any device with Spotify on your WiFi network)
Easily switch to music when you’re done with the white noise
Don’t have to keep phone near speaker
You get all the fun features of Amazon’s Alexa

Disadvantages

Requires an Echo Dot to make the Bose SoundLink Mini into a WiFi speaker
Not travel friendly: having to bring a Dot and pair it with WiFi in every hotel would be annoying
Streaming over WiFi isn’t 100% perfect – I still hear the occasional dropout, though far less on WiFi than over Bluetooth. Some days it goes for hours without a cutout, so it might just come down to connection quality.

This approach isn’t ideal for travel, since you’d have to bring your Echo Dot with and get everything on the WiFi network wherever you go (assuming there even is one).

Technique #2: Stream to the SoundLink over Bluetooth from your phone

This is an alternative way to turn your SoundLink into a white noise machine. If you don’t have (or want to buy) an Echo Dot, you can instead connect to the speaker over Bluetooth. The big disadvantages here are that your phone’s audio output is tied up (you can’t make a call or watch a video on Facebook, for example, without stopping the white noise) and streaming Bluetooth from your phone drains the phone’s battery. You also have to keep your phone near the speaker (or at least in the same room-ish).

To play white noise over Bluetooth:

Set up a Spotify playlist of one white noise “song” and set it to loop. This is my Spotify “white noise” playlist. (Or use whatever music service you like – I recommend something you can play from your phone’s local storage without WiFi so you’re not also draining your battery on Bluetooth streaming.)
Pair your device with the SoundLink mini
Let ‘er rip – white noise will play through the speaker until you tell it to stop

Personally, I find Bluetooth connections kind of unstable. They seem more prone to blips and brief interruptions, which is particularly annoying when you want a solid whooosh of white noise washing over you without pauses.

Advantages

Requires the fewest parts – assuming you already have a phone and a SoundLink, you have everything you need for this approach
Easy to use – just like how you already use the speaker for playing songs
Travel friendly

Disadvantages

Can’t play any other audio on your source device, since its audio is being piped to the SoundLink (so YouTube, Facebook videos, recording videos on your phone, and making phone calls are all out while the phone is busy playing white noise through the SoundLink)
Drains device battery streaming Bluetooth
Somewhat more prone to cutting out – not ideal for a white noise experience
Your phone has to stay in range of the SoundLink speaker

Technique #3: Connect via an AUX cable and play directly from your device to the SoundLink speaker

This is my favorite technique for turning a SoundLink into a white noise machine when I travel. The SoundLink travels pretty well so I often bring it with in my luggage. The AUX cable provides a much more stable connection to the speaker than Bluetooth does, in my experience. Once connected, set the SoundLink to AUX mode and play the white noise song like you would any song. Like the Bluetooth technique above, though, this technique also ties up audio on the phone.

Advantages

Strong connection unlikely to cut out
Easy to set up
Travel friendly

Disadvantages

Must keep phone close to speaker and connected from a wire – not great for in-bed phone web surfing
Drains device battery because it’s constantly playing music

Where to find a white noise “song” to play

You’ll need some kind of white noise audio source, whether it’s on your device (ie: saved to your phone) or on someone else’s server, such as Spotify’s. Honestly, finding a good song that would loop cleanly (no fades, no obvious markers of repetition inside the song) was the hardest part of this whole project.

Why I recommend Spotify

Spotify’s a great place to browse for white noise “songs” because you can find out if they loop or not without spending buck after buck or having to wade through reviews and guess. Spotify has a lot of white noise “songs” to choose from. Some are better than others – a lot of them have an audible fade out/fade in, which sucks and totally defeats the purpose.

After some trial and error, I found Pouring Rain – Loopable with no fade. This is my favorite “white noise” song on Spotify because it sounds great and I can’t hear it looping. I found this song inside a larger collection called White Noise Therapy, which has about a zillion similar “songs” to pick from so you can find your favorite (also good: Waterfalls and Dulled White Noise).

To get a single song to loop on Spotify, you have to make a playlist and put that one song in it. Set the playlist to loop with this arrow button:

Here’s the 1-song playlist I use for Pouring Rain (you may have to set it to loop yourself, I’m not sure if looping on/off is “saved” with a playlist). Since I have Spotify Premium, I downloaded the song locally to use it even when I don’t have a WiFi connection.

Note: I’ve never used Spotify without Premium so I don’t know what the non-Premium experience is like. Presumably, Premium means I can play it as much as I want and without ads, which is essential to having a nice, relaxing loop going.

Dig around in your favorite music streaming or music buying app and I’m sure you’ll find something you like.

Happy listening!

Amazon Echo Dot is BACK! October release date, new color, and more!

September 14, 2016 by M.B. Grant 1 Comment

The Echo Dot is coming back in October, woohoo!

The Echo Dot is available for pre-order through Amazon.com, with an expected ship date of October 20, 2016. Now you can have an Echo in every room, without having to actually buy an Echo for every room. You can buy 3 Dots for less than the cost of one Echo.

The Dot sold out quickly last spring, and this is the first hint of its return. Considering how fast it flew off the virtual shelves when it was introduced, the Dot will probably sell out again. Hopefully, Amazon has a bigger heap of these things ready to go than they did last time.

It’s back! And it’s got a lower price tag!

These new Dots, branded “2nd Generation”, are mechanically identical to 1st gen Dots except for a white color option and a lower price. A white Echo is being added to the lineup, too, with an earlier release date of September 28, 2016.

Get excited! The Echo and Dot now come in both black and white.

Here’s a quick rundown on the Dot:

What’s so great about Dot?

All the same functionality of an Echo. Like Echo, Dot is always listening for your commands and responds to you audibly.
Cheaper than buying another Echo
Hook it up to a better speaker (such as one of our favorites, the Bose SoundLink) to give that speaker Alexa capabilities and stream music through it over Bluetooth or WiFi
Add Alexa functionality to every room of your house

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you love your Echo and want more of it. The Dot is like getting more Echoes but for cheaper, and the tradeoff is the speaker isn’t as good. The Dot’s speaker is kind of like the speaker on your phone. However, unlike the Echo, you can plug the Dot into any better speaker, and this Voltron-like combination of powers might make Dot + Your Really Good Speaker a better deal for you than a single Echo.

Pictured speakers, left to right: Sonos Play 3, Bose SoundLink Mini II, Bose SoundLink Color (these are all great speakers!)

What’s new in the 2nd generation Echo Dot?

Lower price!
This pre-order is open to everyone! This time around, the Dot can be ordered directly through Amazon.com, by anyone. The previous Dot was only ordered through an existing Echo and there was a stricter limit on the number that could be purchased by a single buyer.
White color option
It’s actually available for purchase 😀

The 2nd generation Echo Dot has the same internals as the 1st generation version.

Echo Dot, now with the burden of having to choose which color you want.

Echo Dot Bundle Deals

Amazon’s got some sweet bundle deals for the Dot this time around.

Dot bundle deals

You can buy 5 Dots and get the 6th one free, thanks to a bundle deal currently offered by Amazon. (There is also a “buy 10 get 12 free” deal, which is basically the same thing but Amazon is currently restricting buyers to one multipack per customer.) If you have a big place or multiple places, or some cooperative friends, this is an awesome deal.

Don’t forget to enter the promo code when you complete your Amazon order: DOT6PACK or DOT12PACK

This release of the Dot comes with two bundle deals: buy 5 – get 1 free or buy 10 -get 2 free

What goes well with the Echo Dot?

When the return of the Dot was first made known on Amazon, Amazon was also offering some sweet Dot + other thing deals. Amazon has since discontinued these bundle deals.

Here are some things that I think go well with a Dot.

Hue Philips Starter Kit (3 rainbow bulbs and a hub)

What could be ~~lazier~~ better than telling your lights to turn on or off with just your voice? “Alexa, turn the lights on” is probably the first words our baby will learn because we say it so much around here. The Philips Hue starter kit comes with 3 rainbow bulbs and a hub.

Put the Hue kit and the Echo Dot on the same network and boom – you’ve got voice controlled lights. If you aren’t convinced, check out our detailed Hue Philips Starter Kit review here (we love this lighting system so much, we’ve got it in both our apartment and our weekend place).

Bose SoundLink Mini II

Something the Dot is good for is turning your Bluetooth or WiFi speaker into a voice-controlled speaker. The Echo and the Tap only have so-so speakers, but if you want the best of both worlds (voice control over an awesome speaker), grab something like the Bose SoundLink Mini II to go with your Dot.

Make any speaker into an Alexa-powered speaker with the Dot.

This speaker is incredible, especially for its size. I’ve had my SoundLink Mini for a couple years now and it’s such a versatile, powerful speaker. I highly recommend it to anyone wondering which speaker to pair with a Dot. The SoundLink mini isn’t WiFi by default, but paired with a Dot, it can be. This means you can stream music over WiFi to it (such as through Spotify Connect), which offers better sound quality and connectivity over streaming through Bluetooth.

My “mini” is currently acting as a soundbar for my TV, but when I travel or head down to the rec room I take it with me thanks to its small size and awesome sound quality.

The bottom line

The Echo Dot is back and better than ever! Go get yours before they sell out!

1-Day Deal: Amazon Echo and Tap 15% off – TODAY ONLY

April 19, 2016 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

thank_you_amazon_banner In honor of being recognized as the #1 most reputable company in the US, Amazon is gracing us (customers in the United States) with a 1-day 15% discount on its voice-activated speaker and home automation hub, the Amazon Echo (see our Echo review here), and its portable Amazon Tap Bluetooth speaker (see our Tap review here).

(There is no discount on the Echo Dot.)

If you’re still on the fence about which one you want, go with the the Echo. The voice-activated convenience gives Echo an edge over the Tap, the Tap’s speaker isn’t that great anyway.

Get ’em while supplies last!

Amazon Echo ~~$179~~ $153.71
Amazon Tap portable speaker ~~$129~~ $111

They don’t do this often – I got my Echo on discount back in October 2015 and this is the first I’ve seen of a Tap getting discounted.

Review: Amazon Tap unboxing and hands-on review

April 3, 2016 by M.B. Grant 4 Comments

Last updated: 4/3/2016

Our Amazon Tap rating:

I’m still super in love with my Amazon Echo, so I pre-ordered an Amazon Tap when it was announced and eagerly awaited its March 31st arrival. I was hoping for a slimmer, lighter, less-expensive alternative to my Bose Mini SoundLink and while the Tap lags behind my Bose in terms of audio quality, I found many other reasons to love the Tap over the past several days.

Read on for my hands-on Amazon Tap review!

Amazon Tap speaker is smaller than Echo and portable (up to 9 hours on battery charge)

Amazon Tap review: the Tap at a glance

Tap is basically a smaller, portable Echo with some notable tradeoffs. Its primary function is to be a portable Bluetooth speaker, but it’s greatest weakness is its bass quality. It’s not bad audio, per se, and oddly enough – it seems to have gotten better after using it for several days – but it’s definitely not the room-filling bass you’d get with a Bose Color Mini or a Bose Mini SoundLink (two similarly priced Bluetooth speakers that I already own and use around my home).

The big Tap advantage, of course, are that you get access to all that Alexa has to offer in this speaker (provided you have it on a WiFi network – no Alexa at the beach). It used to be that you had to hit the microphone button to wake up Alexa, but Amazon updated the software to allow Alexa to be “always listening” on a Tap.

You can ask Alexa to announce the weather, ask her to play one of your Amazon Music playlists, ask her adjust your home’s temperature (if you have a smart thermostat that is Alexa compatible such as the Ecobee3), or turn your lights off (like I do every day with my Alexa-integrated Phillips Hue).

There’s more: the Tap holds about 9 hours of battery life, which is competitive with other Bluetooth speakers in its price range. It’s also one of the more portable Bluetooth speakers I’ve ever owned, weighing about 1 pound and with no hard edges and no particular “facing direction”.

» See current Tap stock and prices on Amazon.com

How is Amazon Tap different from the Amazon Echo?

Tap runs on an internal battery charge (up to 9 hours), whereas Echo must always be plugged in to a power source
Tap has a 3.5mm audio in jack – note this is not for headphones, it’s for audio input
Tap is smaller than Echo – the Tap is maybe 65% of the size of an Echo
Tap can be tap activated or voice activated – you can decide whether the Alexa in your Tap is “always listening” or only listens when you press the microphone button. The other on-unit buttons let you skip songs, change volume, turn it on/off. This is true even when the Tap is docked.
Tap is supposedly a slightly, but not significantly, better speaker than Echo (both are 360 degree omnidirectional speakers, though) but I think the bass is lacking
Tap costs less than an Echo

What do Amazon Tap and Amazon Echo have in common?

Both Tap and Echo have access to Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled “smart hub” system. You can issue all the same Alexa commands to Tap as you can to Echo (just press the mic button first).
Both are 360 degree omnidirectional speakers
Both support streaming/playing music to the device over Bluetooth and WiFi

Amazon Echo and Amazon Tap side by side – notice the Tap is smaller and has more on-unit controls.

What is Amazon’s Echo Dot for?

It’s a voice activated “control center” that you hook up (via Bluetooth or the included aux cable) to another speaker set, such as a Tap, a Bose system, a Sonos system, or your choice. (I don’t own an Echo Dot). Echo Dot has its own little speaker inside, but the idea is to take the brains of the Echo and transplant them onto whatever (presumably awesome) speaker system you happen to already own.

Think of Echo Dot as Amazon’s way of saying, “You don’t like our speakers? Fine, you can hook this Echo Dot up to your own speakers – and still enjoy our voice-activated Alexa stuff”. It’s the best of both worlds.

As of this writing, the Echo Dot can only be ordered by people who already own an Echo, but you can still check out its features and specs via that link.

How does the Tap audio quality compare to other Bluetooth speakers?

The Tap’s audio quality is about what you’d get from a $120-ish Bluetooth speaker. It lags behind similarly priced speakers from Bose. It’s strength is in the Alexa integration – if you only care about audio quality, get a Dot and hook it up to a better speaker.

Weirdly enough, I thought the Tap sounded borderline terrible right out of the box, but after a weekend of heavy use, I swear it sounds much better. My partner insists this is because it’s gone through the speaker break-in period, which I’d never heard of before but it makes sense and the Internet agrees it’s a thing and the Tap really does sound better after many hours of use.

I also don’t think I just got Stockholmed into accepting it – when I compare side-by-side with my Bose Mini SoundLink after a weekend of use, the difference between them is still noticeable (the Bose sends waves of bass through my desk) but the Tap isn’t THAT far behind – not as much as it was when I first unboxed it.

If audio quality is everything to you, though, then look at the speakers Bose makes. I can personally recommend the Bose SoundLink Color (slightly less expensive than the Tap) and the Bose Mini SoundLink (slightly pricier than the Tap).

The Bose SoundLink Color in particular has a much fuller audio range than the Tap, comparable battery life, and identical on-unit controls. (However, it’s worth mentioning that the SoundLink Color is 50% (half a pound) heavier and slightly larger than the Tap).

Bluetooth Connectivity

The Tap really stands out at connecting over Bluetooth quickly and painlessly.

The best thing? You can wake up the Tap speaker over Bluetooth without first having to press a button on the Tap to turn it on. This means you don’t have to get out of bed to fire up the Tap, just connect to it from your phone. (As if my Echo wasn’t already contributing to a massive amount of laziness around here.) This works whether the Tap is on its base or not.

This ease of connectivity merits mention because of the many struggles I’ve had in the past with getting my family’s various iPhones and my partner’s LG to sync with various Bluetooth devices, including my Subaru Forester, his (incredible sounding) Bose SoundLink III and my own (beloved) Bose Mini SoundLink.

Bluetooth can be janky and annoying to get connected, so when the Tap just quickly accepted my phone (and my partner’s phone) it was like wow.

Amazon Tap unboxing

Just like its Echo ancestor the Amazon Tap arrives in a beautifully packed box. The narrow box to the right of the speaker unit contains the charge cable, wall adapter, charge base, and a small instruction booklet.

Inside the box

Amazon Tap speaker hardware
charging cradle
USB cable for charging via cradle or Tap unit
wall-outlet adapter so you can charge from a traditional electric socket

Tap’s charge base

Something I noticed right away with the Tap is how perfectly it docks with its cradle. With similar Bluetooth speakers, I’ve encountered occasional ambiguity over whether the speaker was actually docked or not.

Not so with Tap – it’s pretty much impossible to set it on the base in a way that makes it look properly docked without it actually being docked.

You can also get extra bases and charge cables on Amazon.com

Top of Tap unit (audio controls)

Play/Pause
Volume up/down
Previous song / next song
Microphone (wake Alexa up)
Row of 5 LED lights indicate when Alexa is listening

Back of Tap unit (pairing and power)

On the back of the unit, from top to bottom:

power button
3.5mm audio jack (so you can take audio input from another source, such as a tablet or TV)
a Mini USB charge port (use as an alternative to the charging dock base)
pairing button that is used to enter Bluetooth pairing mode or to help it get on your WiFi network.

The narrow port above the pairing button is the Micro USB port. You can charge the Tap via its cradle or plug it into the charge cable directly. Not having the bring the cradle with for charging makes the Tap even more portable.

If you already have an Echo

Think of Tap like a second generation Echo instead of an addition to an existing family. Echo and Tap do not communicate with each other.

I know, I was bummed about this too, and there’s a chance that it might change with a firmware update in the future. I mean, why not? Why not have the option to have the Tap listen for Alexa commands as long as it’s plugged in or on its base? I could see some potential for conflict if they both use the same wake word, but this problem doesn’t seem insurmountable.

Taking Amazon Tap along for a ride

My Tap is surprisingly well-traveled for having only been in my possession for a few days. Already, it has watched over several games of pool down in my apartment’s rec room and ridden along for many miles on a muddy bike trail.

Below, I stuffed the Tap speaker into my bike bag, turned up the volume, and became the only party bike on the trail Saturday morning. If you’re heading out with a group of people this summer, be it for a picnic, a trip to the beach, a party at someone’s backyard pool, a ride on the bike trail – you might get a kick out of having the Tap along to play some music for your group. My partner and I definitely did.

What could Tap do better?

It’s a competent entry into the low-end Bluetooth speaker market, so my wishlist is pretty short on this one:

Better bass – I am all about that bass, and even after the break-in period, the Tap isn’t quite where similarly priced offerings from Bose are on bass levels.

(I used to have an item here for “let it be always listening like the normal Echo” but Amazon added that, so this list got shorter!)

The bottom line

It’s a solid speaker with a lot of nice extras thanks to Alexa integration. If you already have an Echo and want to keep doing things you do with the Echo, you can keep doing them with a Tap.

Mostly, it’s about tradeoffs: with a comparably priced Bose, you’ll get richer bass but you won’t get access to Alexa features and I think the Bose physical designs are somewhat less portable than the Tap.

» Check out the Amazon Tap on Amazon.com

Amazon Echo remote is coming back May 1st, 2016!

March 13, 2016 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

The Amazon Echo remote is coming back in May! Woohoo!

Gravy train’s ending, eBay resellers

The Echo remote is awesome, especially if you use your Echo for playing music. It’s much easier to press up/down next song/previous song or pause on a remote than it is to speak the verbal command equivalent.

The little magnetic holder makes it easy to keep it on your bed frame or desk or wherever it sticks. It’s also great for trolling people (run into the bathroom with it, whisper “Simon says, ‘You are a poopy head'” into it and Alexa will repeat it for whomever is sitting near the Echo). Okay, more seriously, it’s great for issuing commands quietly without having to yell across the room.

Clearly everyone else thought they were awesome, too, because Amazon ran out around the holiday season last year and never restocked (I checked constantly). In the meantime, people sold them on eBay for $100-$200. I now have a second Echo in my weekend place, and wow, do I wish I had a second remote to go with it – but I don’t $200 wish-I-had-a-second one.

I actually considered eBaying mine while the selling was good, but I didn’t want to live without mine for an unknown amount of time (forever?!) while Amazon got its remote factory back up and running. That’s how good the remote is! My remote gets a ton of use, and when its batteries died and it took me a week to replace them, I actually stopped using my Echo for music because it was such a hassle to interact with the music player using voice alone.

The remote doesn’t seem to have changed at all from its 2015 version. It’s a good little device the way it is, but many of us wish you could pair multiple remotes with a single Echo. Given the “over the air” updateability of the Echo, though, perhaps this could change someday without having to upgrade hardware.

So there’s the big news for this weekend: Echo remotes are coming back in May! That’s less than 2 months. You’ve made it this long without one, you can make it another 6 weeks. But given how popular they were before, and how much people were willing to pay for them on eBay once Amazon’s remote production went on hiatus, I’d strongly suggest preordering yours right now.

How we’ve missed you, Echo remote <3

My favorite (and most useful) Amazon Echo commands

December 25, 2015 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

As my Amazon Echo turns 3 months old, certain commands have bubbled up to the surface and become routine parts of my day. These are my favorites Echo commands (and what they do).

“Alexa, turn the lights on” / “Alexa, turn the lights off”
Alexa turns my Philips Hue lights on and off by request – see my Hue review here.

“Alexa, start a timer for 30 minutes”
Useful for numerous things including, but not limited to: cooking, laundry, hair dyeing, calling Mom in X minutes, and time-boxing tasks.

“Alexa, how much time left on the timer?”
Particularly useful since there’s no clock displayed.

“Alexa, play playlist Sleepy Time”
I listen to this playlist as I fall asleep every night. I had to first create and populate the playlist in Amazon Music, but it after I set it up it was instantly available for my Amazon Echo to find by name and play from.

“Alexa, set a sleep timer for 45 minutes”
Alexa turns off the music when the sleep timer expires. The sleep timer doesn’t ring any alarms, as long as you’re careful to not accidentally set a normal timer instead (like I did once. Once.)

“Alexa, what time is it?”
Sounds silly since I’m usually facing a phone or a computer, but in the middle of the night I’ve used this as the laziest timepiece ever.

“Alexa, trigger bedtime lights”
Activates an IFTTT recipe I created that turns my three Hue lamps to a purple hex code #5353c6 (it’s easy to hook up IFTTT to Echo, go here and follow the steps)

“Alexa, trigger find my phone”
Activates another IFTTT recipe I created that calls my phone.

Of course, there’s tons more you can do with an Echo (see my more detailed review here), these are just the phrases I tend to use over and over.

Review: Amazon Echo is the smart robot friend you always wanted

December 7, 2015 by M.B. Grant 6 Comments

Last updated: 12/07/2015

Our Amazon Echo rating:

Amazon Echo at a glance

amazon_echo_review_main_hardware_and_remote

It’s voice activated! It plays music on demand! It lets me control my Hue lights without touching anything!

It hardly needs an introduction, the way Amazon’s been advertising it. Amazon Echo is an interactive voice-controlled hub that can do a lot of things, like look up information, play music, and control other home automation systems you might have. It’s always doing more, too, because Amazon rolls out regular updates.

Here are the things I mostly use it for (but there are way, way more things it can do than this).

Control connected home automation technologies, including Philips Hue smart lights and WeMo smart switches
Play music from your Amazon Music library
Set a timer (alert you when time is up), or sleep timer (stop playing music in X minutes)
Manage your (cloud-based) to-do list and shopping list
Request audible traffic and weather reports
Enable Skills, which are sort of like “apps” for Alexa (they give it even more specialized capabilities)
IFTTT support adds even MORE stuff Echo can do: see popular IFTT Echo recipes here

This 30 second clip by Amazon shows it in action.

(PS: The Glitch Mob puts on the best live show I’ve seen in years. Good choice of music, Amazon!)

Pros

It understands me better than I expected, despite my usual struggles with voice-interactive technology. There’s even a “Voice Training” section in the app for fine-tuning its ability to understand you.
Pretty good music player: the sound is better than I expected, and the convenience of controlling it by voice means I use it for routine playlists pretty much every day (“Alexa, play playlist Sleepy Time”)
Unobtrusive design: the Echo looks nice, has a small footprint, ships with a long power cord, and the adapter isn’t huge (it doesn’t block the outlet next to it on the receptacle)
Easy setup: plug it in and it finds your network. Setup time start to finish is only a few minutes, and if it’s too loud or too quiet during setup, just twist the ring on top
Optional remote (sold separately) has proven more useful than I expected, allowing me to issue commands quietly from anywhere in my apartment
Amazon frequently patches in more capabilities, so there’s some hope that the hardware won’t be out of date in a month
Voice control over Hue lights! “Alexa, turn the lights to 20%” and “Alexa, turn the lights on” are now words I say daily
Voice control over devices plugged into a WeMo smart outlet! “Alexa, turn the fan off”
Bluetooth pairing: pair your phone to Echo over Bluetooth so you can play music, including Spotify, from your phone

Cons

Limited capabilities with home automation systems: once you want to go beyond on/off, there isn’t as much you can do. IFTTT support?
Amazon Prime Music is limited in its offerings: your mileage may vary, but I couldn’t find a lot of the songs I went looking for in here. And when I did, they were often arbitrarily “free” to stream as a Prime user or only available if I purchased them, and there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to which songs were which
Starting playlists by voice is awesome, but it’ll take some time to set them up as playlists in Amazon Music if you aren’t already using the program for your music sorting
Not as good a speaker as similarly-priced offerings from Bose: my Bose Mini definitely sounds better, with richer bass being the most noticeable difference. However, the Echo ends up being my default music player by merit of being able to start it by voice
Must be plugged in to operate: you can’t charge it up and take it somewhere else for a little while like you can with Bose Mini
You have to call it “Alexa” or “Amazon” and for some reason, it just irks me that I can’t rename it
Doesn’t work with Spotify or iTunes (yet?): alas, that’s where I get my music from (and in the case of iTunes, I’m pretty entrenched with 10 years worth of playlists and music purchases). You can pair with your phone over Bluetooth to get access to these services, but it’s not built-in to Echo.

Hands-on Amazon Echo review

TL;DR: It’s great! If you love tech toys you’ll love it. I you can find it on one of Amazon’s occasional promotions for $149 grab it, it’s worth it.

» Check current Amazon Echo stock and price on Amazon.com «

I’ve had my Echo for nearly two months now and I’m still discovering new tricks and learning new routines to use with it. This isn’t a piece of technology you set up once and forget – Amazon is keeps adding new abilities to the Echo, and to get the most of it you’ll want to stay current on what it can do. You won’t learn (and make habit of) everything it can do in an afternoon.

The blue ring lights up in response to you saying, “Alexa…” to indicate the device heard you.

What’s gone well

Ease of use

It’s just easy to use, simple as that. The setup was fast and controlling it with my voice is a snap.

Judging by many of the earlier reviews of the Echo online, it has an enthusiastic following among people with disabilities and/or limited mobility and I can see why. The Echo has significantly reduced how often I have to flick switches and fumble around in the dark for a light switch or my phone. I don’t have to walk across a room or lean over a table or perform any potentially tricky maneuvers to operate light switches, and I never have to walk around in the dark.

Voice activation

I was initially hesitant to bring home an Amazon Echo because I’ve had a not-insignificant amount of trouble with voice-navigated stuff in the past. I’ve struggled with phone menus, Siri, and speech to text to the point that my attitude towards all things voice-activated is closer to, “Ehh, f— it” than anything else at this point in my life.

The only thing that convinced me I would be able to reliably interact with an Echo was trying out a friend’s Echo. (I do try to enunciate when I speak to my Echo.)

For anyone wanting more info on my “accent”: I grew up west of Chicago (as did my parents) and my upbringing was in English. I am female, but no one’s accused me of having a high-pitched voice. My friends here in Seattle tell me I have a slight accent. Alexa understands me about 80% of the time, and (if Alexa’s history is any indication) the most common misunderstandings are song titles, which are (often) outside normal speaking patterns anyway.

So, yeah, I’m impressed on this front. I don’t know how reliable it is with other accents, but I’ve been surprised at its accuracy with mine.

Philips Hue integration

Hands-free control of my Philips Hue lights (link to my review) was probably the biggest reason I got an Echo.

I wanted to walk in the door and say, “Alexa, turn the lights on” and boy howdy, is it great. (I do the same when leaving). I also love crawling into bed and saying, “Alexa, dim the lights” and then, when I’m ready to fall asleep, say, “Alexa, turn the lights off”. It’s such a pampered, lazy thing to admit to liking, but I grew up with Star Trek and I love this stuff. 🙂

Setup was easy: just say, “Alexa, discover my devices” and hit the button on the Hue bridge. It was easy to group my lightbulbs into a single group (named “lights”) via the Alexa app.

Audio capabilities better than expected, but not Bose quality

Traditionally, I did (or do) most of my idle music listening through my portable Bose Mini speaker, and the Amazon Echo is definitely not as good a speaker. The weaker bass is the most noticeable difference.

However, as soon as I set up a couple playlists on Amazon Music I found myself using my Amazon Echo for music more than I thought I would. “Alexa, play Sleepy Time playlist” is so easy, and I can follow that up with a sleep timer, “Alexa, set a sleep timer for 45 minutes” so that it shuts off sometime after I fall asleep.

I find myself starting and stopping music all the time, and it’s definitely more convnient than opening my app, turning on the Bose, and selecting the playlist I want.

Easy to mute it

Just press the mic button on top of the device.

I found this out when I got a phone call while my Echo was busy DJing. I had to mute the Echo quickly and without saying, “Alexa, stop” into my phone call.

Shhh, Alexa. Glad I could shush you without having to issue a vocal command.

The Alexa app is great

The “Alexa” companion app (available on iOS and Android) is polished and fully featured. Nearly everything you can do over voice you can do or access through the app.

You can use the app to:

manage Echo settings
group devices (like Hue bulbs) and name those groups
pair over Bluetooth
get tutorials / tips on things you can ask Alexa to do
view, cancel, pause in-progress timers
give feedback on Echo and the app

The app also keeps a history of every command you’ve given it. In this history, you can mark whether a command was properly understood by Alexa. Presumably, Amazon will collect all this data, swizzle it around in a big data vat, and use it to further improve Alexa’s voice recognition.

Optional Echo remote is useful

The optional Echo remote is also very useful, allowing you to issue commands quietly and from places the Echo wouldn’t normally be able to hear you. Just hold the mic button and speak into it (you don’t even have to use the wake word). You can also use the remote buttons to raise and lower the volume, pause the currently playing song, and navigate backwards and forwards in a playlist. The remote comes with a magnetic mount, so you can keep it tucked away somewhere convenient.

The Amazon Echo remote is sold separately, but was worth the extra cost. I keep mine near my bed.

The only downside to the remote is you can only have one per Echo (but maybe Amazon will change that someday).

What’s the bottom of the Echo look like?

It’s flat, rubbery, and has a cut-away for the power cable. The bottom makes a nice grip on most surfaces, but it has a tendency to collect lint.

What hasn’t gone well

Just a few things…

The first Echo I got was damaged (but Amazon made it right)

My first Echo arrived dented! Boo, hiss. This unit also seemed to have problems identifying what direction my voice was coming from.

On the bright side, Amazon shipped me a replacement within a day of requesting a return.

However, Amazon shipped me a new one immediately (with 1-day shipping!) before I even sent back my first one. The seamless transition from my dented Echo to my replacement Echo was great and went a long way to easing my annoyance.

First Echo I got was set to deafening volume by default

The setup voice was LOUD. Sorry, neighbors. 🙁

When I first unboxed my Echo I didn’t know I could twist the top ring on the hardware to lower the volume. I ended up trying to wrap towels around it to survive the setup process and lower the volume the only way I knew how with, “Alexa, turn it down”. I don’t know why Amazon even lets an Echo use the max volume during setup.

In the grand scheme of things this isn’t a huge flaw, but it made a very poor first impression. My neighbors would have been right to bust down my door and throw the Echo through the nearest window.

Amazon Prime Music is somewhat limited in selection, takes setup to switch over from another service/program

There are a lot of good things to say about Amazon Prime Music. I like the already-created playlists (so you don’t have to scramble to assemble a Christmas playlist one hour before your party), no ads, unlimited song skips, and no apparent restrictions on when you can play what. Sweet! If you already have Prime, you have Prime music, so that’s nice, too.

But when it came time to find my music, things got a bit trickier. Maybe I have more eclectic taste than I realized, but I struggled to name songs that Echo would a) recognize and b) play in full (not 30 second preview). When it does find a song I know, it’s like, aw yiss! because the audio is pretty good and controlling it through voice alone is sweet. (Carbon Based Lifeforms, if you’re reading this… add more of your awesome music to Amazon Prime!)

I had to put in a bit of work upfront to download Amazon Music application onto my PC, upload songs I’ve already paid for because I bought them on iTunes (thank goodness these could be uploaded without DRM grief or I’d be pretty mad), and build them into new Amazon Music-based playlists. Once I did that setup work, though, I could then tell my Echo to play those playlists by name, which is super awesome and works great once it’s all set up.

But then I found Prime Playlists Recommends for Me… Go to Amazon Prime Music in your browser and Amazon will recommend playlists based on songs you’ve purchased in the past! I haven’t bought much music off Amazon, to be honest, but these are pretty good playlists so I wish the Echo had made more of an effort to surface them for me. I only discovered them while doing research for this article. 😉

For random songs, though, it can be fun to see who can name the most ridiculous song to see if Echo will play it. (It has the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” in full… just putting it out there.)

Buying albums over Echo doesn’t work for me for not-obvious reasons

I can’t get “Buy this album” to work on my Echo at all. I can preview an album, but there’s something wrong with my Amazon billing info (which works for everything else I buy on Amazon and has One-Click shopping enabled), but neither Alexa nor Amazon’s billing interface can tell me what the problem is.

At this point I’ve sunk enough time into trying to decipher the root cause and I’ve given up on making purchases through Echo for now, which is too bad because I think Amazon was hoping I would buy a lot of things through my Echo.

I wish I could rename it

Mostly because I’m vain and want to personalize it. But also: I might be the only person on Earth who regularly Skype-chats with another Echo owner, and it does start to get old after I turn off my friend’s lights on accident through video chat (haha).

To get that last star…

Almost there…

I rate my Amazon Echo 4/5 and to get that last star, I’d want to see at least a few of the following wishlist items added either to the software or a new generation of the hardware:

More sophisticated control over my home automation systems. I’d like to say “Alexa, I’m leaving” (or some equivalent) and have her do a number of things at once: stop playing music, turn Hue lights to off, and turn my WeMo device off.
Integration with Spotify and iTunes, since those are the music services / programs I’m already significantly bought into and I’d love to control them with the same voice commands I use with the Amazon Music playlists
Better bass in the speaker: not quite a Bose Mini replacement, but oh so close
Bigger selection in Amazon Prime Music: it’s not even close to Spotify’s and the randomness to which songs can be streamed and which have to be bought is irritating
A rechargeable battery: Maybe I’m just getting greedy now, but I love the portability of my Bose Mini (I bring it everywhere)

More Amazon Echo reviews, questions & answers

Amazon Echo Review: Top Questions Answered! (15 min YouTube video)
LoveMyEcho.com (dedicated fan site)
Gizmodo Echo review
The best Amazon Echo review, in which a grumpy writer tells us how much he loves his Alexa (amazon.com)

The bottom line

The Echo is awesome, and I think we’re only at the beginning in terms of what this device will someday be capable of. Don’t let my bad experiences with a dent and not finding my eclectic weirdo music in Amazon Prime get you down, it’s absolutely worth its price. It’s a ton of fun to play around with in the first few weeks, and the usefulness only improves as you learn more commands for it and add supported home automation systems.

If you have Hue lights, WeMo switches, or any of the other numerous systems Echo intergrates with, you’ll love controlling everything by voice. If you love doing anything with music in the background, you’ll love the ease of starting up a playlist by voice. If you have mobility limitations or an awkward home layout, you might find the Echo plus a few smart home devices makes routine tasks a lot easier.

I suspect I’ve still got more to discover about my Amazon Echo, and I’m looking forward to it.

Should you get it? If you’ve got Prime and a love for current technology, I say go for it, especially if you catch it on discount (Amazon occasionally drops the price to $150).

» Check current Amazon Echo stock and price on Amazon.com «

» Check current Amazon Echo remote stock and price on Amazon.com «