That’s an Amazon Echo , the shopping website’s new in-home personal assistant. It was announced in early November , but didn’t start shipping until just before Christmas. It costs $199, but Amazon Prime members are able to get one for $99, which is how my wife wound up buying one.
The Echo is a lot like Apple’s Siri, but in a dedicated device that’s a 9.25-inch-tall black tube. You can talk to the Echo by addressing it as either Alexa – the default name – or Amazon. It’s always listening for that trigger word, turning on instantly and reacting to questions and commands.
I’ll review it once I’ve lived with it for a while. After all, a product like this is something you work into your lifestyle. How well it integrates into your daily routine will be a measure of its success. Some of the early reviews were not kind, but this is a platform that’s expandable. I’m taking the long view on this one.
That said, here are a few initial impressions:
• The Echo’s setup requires a few steps, but a simple cheatsheet in the box and a voice prompts guide you quickly through the process. After plugging the Echo on, you connect your smartphone or computer to its own Wi-Fi network, then tell the device the name of your in-home Wi-Fi network. You download an app (available for both iOS and Android) to complete the setup process and walk through some examples of what Echo can do. There’s even a video tutorial that plays in the app.
• As with the voice search feature on Amazon’s FireTV , the Echo’s voice recognition is excellent. So far, it has only misheard one command, but you can use the app to correct the device’s mistake, which then improves its accuracy.
• The Echo has a very good directional microphone, and hears us from all corners of the room. (You can speak into an included Wi-Fi-based remote control when you’re not nearby.) When it switches on in response to the word “Alexa”, a light ring on its top fires up and a bright segment of the circle “points” in your direction, indicating the Echo knows where you are in the room. It’s a little creepy, but also pretty cool.
• You can ask Echo about the weather (both locally and in distant places), request a news briefing, play and even shop for music, ask for facts and even do calculations. For example, Echo will tell you how many teaspoons are in a gallon (768). When it doesn’t know what to do with a query, it sends a link to a search on Bing to the Echo app.
• If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can have the Echo stream Prime Music, which is similar to Apple’s iTunes Radio or Pandora. My wife holds our family’s Prime account, so this feature isn’t available to me. But you can set up multiple Amazon profiles, so I included my wife’s. Now I can switch to it and use the Prime Music feature. You can also stream radio from TuneIn or IHeartRadio .
• The sound is surprisingly good. It’s still clearly a single speaker on a relatively small device with simulated stereo, but the audio is pleasant in the living/kitchen area of our one-bedroom apartment.
So far, I like Echo. The key to its ultimate success is how Amazon expands its capabilities over time, and whether it grows into something more than a cool novelty. I’ll report back in a month or two and let you know.
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