So as I mentioned a while back I ordered one of Amazon's Echo speakers. It came a bit earlier than expected and has been sitting around the house for a couple of weeks now and as the title might suggest... it has some issues.
The Good:
I am not sure what the gripes are regarding the speaker quality. For a single point speaker it is plenty adequate. It isn't a super mega woofer setup that will blow the clothes off any careless passerby or anything. But it gets loud enough, has reasonable bass levels for the size and is generally free of distortions. A home entertainment system replacement it is not. So long as you keep things in perspective this unit will not disappoint. That said, seeing as one of its most useful features currently it playing your music collection, or prime music it is at best average if you are talking the higher end Bluetooth speaker systems like the Jawbone Jambox etc...
I like the design. Just a simple black cylinder with a blue halo that lights up when it detects an interaction attempt.
Voice recognition over its own noise. Alexa is pretty smart at listening to you if the only things going on are the Echo making noise and you trying to talk to it. Introduce a third party sound source be it a TV or others in the room and well... it works about like you would expect if you have ever tried using audio interfaces in dirty noise environments. I had expected this to be a bit better based on all the discussions about the multiple microphones. But more on that below. Something that takes getting used to is the fact that you do not need to wait for a prompt and in fact if you do it can often lead to the audio prompt ending prematurely as Alexa seems to quickly stop listening if input is not detected. Basically you have to trust that when you clearly say "Alexa" (or "Amazon", the only other voice prompt available) that you naturally continue just as you would when talking to someone you assume will pay attention once they hear their name. While there are some caveats I have to say that generally speaking I was pretty impressed with the recognition ability of the voice recognition... and that was without any training. Something I have been meaning to take the time to do.
Audio weather status is nice and seems to work reliably.
Daily status briefing is a good idea, I haven't really used it much though.
The So So:
Music control is... well lets just say a bit rough around the edges. For example, by default any music played from your library for say a particular artist is played in a shuffle order. In order to get it to play in order you need to request it play the album. Might seem simple enough but it is pretty common for bands to have self titled albums. IE an album that is the same as their name. Alexa does not understand this concept and it just so happened I had a couple of albums with this issue I kept trying to get to play in order. I had to resort to the application.... speaking of which...
The app is not good, it is not bad. In fact I'd have to say it is by far the most effective way to interact with Alexa and that is the problem.
Ordering from Echo. Yes you can do it. Yes I did it once. Not real sure I like the idea with a soon to be more astute young person around. One click is dangerous enough, voice ordering could be very bad.
Timers. One of the most useful functions of Siri, Cortana or Google voice interfaces and always there if you are within shouting distance. The problem? Unlike say a timer\reminder you set on a phone there is no way to add context to the alarm. Something I tried to do was to set an alarm with the following phrase " remind (name) that it is time to go to bed at 8:00 ". This set an alarm for 8:00 but there was no information provided as to why the alarm was going off. This is something you can do with SIRI and the info you provided will pop up on screen with the notification/alarm.
The Bad:
Inability to link music from local stores is a shame. You should not have to store music on amazon to utilize Alexa's music streaming ability. Amazon is about as bad as Apple used to be in the early days of itunes for ignoring the possibility that someone may have music not curated by their system. Considering fire devices and android devices can link to lots of music services it is a shame that the Echo does not take advantage of more than a couple of internet radio solutions beyond Amazon's own Prime service.
The voice recognition with multiple sound sources. So... I have to say the idea that the Echo had multiple Mics seemed to indicate it could possibly do a neat trick in terms of paying attention to voice commands coming from a specific direction and ignoring sources of potential commands emanating from a location different from the one that initiated the attention phrase. Ummmm..... not the case. TV behind the unit, people off to the side and very separated spatially all confuse the crap out of the Echo if they are making noise. Since the cancelation of any noise it is making seems to work I am thinking this thing REALLY needs to be able to interact with the fire TV. It would be nice if it could pull the same trick off when the Fire TV was your TV sound source. For the issue of multiple folks talking they really need to sort out a way to do some more sophisticated echo location of the source of the command phrase and or separation of various vocal signatures to follow the audio coming from a specific source in a dirty noise environment. I have some hope this is something that can be added via software in the future provided the microphones are already suitable for doing accurate triangulation of the origin of multiple audio sources. Why did I think they had done more on this front? Because the device really is voice prompt controlled first. A truly disappointing experience was being told there were actions that could only be achieved via the application. Voice prompt first indeed.
I can create a todo list. I can add to the grocery list. But I can't delete things. That takes the app. In fact with the exception of "stop" for any current activity it seems Alexa does not do very well at all with negatives. For example I have been using Alexa to play "classical" music. This frustratingly causes it to randomly interject tracks from the Phantom of the Opera album I have in my library and I can't figure out a way to tell it Phantom of the Opera is not "classical" music. Saying something like "Stop playing Phantom of the Opera" gets me "playing tracks from Phantom of the Opera". Perhaps if I go into the App I can re-classify the album.
Also, continuing on the subject of classical music, unless you are a true initiate of the subject matter it is damn near impossible to get a specific track to play. For example you cannot ask for just "Play Brandenburg Concerto #5". You have to know something like "Brandenburg Concerto #5 in b flat minor by (some performance group/artist etc...)". Having such a long string almost ensures there will be some misunderstanding in the voice recognition process or you will remember the wrong key for the artist you are selecting or some such.
The lack of integration with the Fire TV. Really, this seems to be a no brainer to me. The Echo should provide an extended interface with a Fire TV.
Conclusion:
I only ordered it because as a Prime subscriber I could get it for 100$ and I figured that if nothing else it would be worthwhile as a bluetooth speaker and at this point, that is about where I am with it. It certainly is not worth the full asking price of $200 as in that range there are definitely better speakers available. Does Alexa make it worth more? As yet I'd say no. I think it would be worth more if it had a big honking battery stuffed into it and lasted forever as a bluetooth speaker when not plugged in. But, as I pointed out in my original post on the subject, Improving the voice interface capabilities is most likely not hardware dependent. I have a growing suspicion that the coming Apple TV upgrade that will very likely add SIRI and some additional HomeKit integration is going to give Alexa a rather uncomfortable spanking. I hope Amazon is working on a way to link up Alexa and Fire TV otherwise I have a rather awkward $100 bluetooth speaker on my hand that occasionally thinks I am talking to it. It is probably a good thing Amazon doesn't allow users to re-define the voice prompt as I would probably choose something very derogatory at the moment.
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