Gadgetory

hey everyone Jimmy with Jim's preview her I finally picked up the Amazon tap to give it a shot here and I also bought the Amazon echo and that video should be coming up pretty soon but with the tap it's a portable bluetooth speaker with Alexa capabilities helping you at home or wherever you have Wi-Fi that is enhancer in questions signing up lists purchasing items and the list goes on but more detail on that in the review shortly I personally paid $99 for the tap but this does retail for a hundred and twenty nine dollars at the time of this video I'll place my links in the description below click on my links to check for updated prices as they could fluctuate from time to time you can purchase this direct from Amazon if you choose to do so so without further adieu welcome everyone to Jim's review room going over the physical features looks are of course subjective but I'm really loving the style here it's subtle modern and just enough originality as we're functionality although you do have the braided fabric like the UE boom and other rugged Bluetooth speakers on the markets unfortunately it's not waterproof but overall though this feels like a quality product the speaker only stands up for sound and up top you have your vibe controls and to skip songs pause and play as you choose to do so pressing volume up and down at the same time will give you tapped battery life the battery is that about 50% moving down there is the Alexa button and this has to be the only area where I felt was somewhat lacking the bun wasn't as tactile and was a bit squishy making the experience not as solid as I was hoping for compared to the rest of the speaker which is top-notch nonetheless the button still works though the ads for audio outputs this does offer 360 resound and the tap does well here in even audio distribution but more my sound test shortly rotating to the rear powers on top a 3.5 millimeter input is available for physical connections a microUSB port for charging your speaker and last is the Bluetooth / Wi-Fi pairing button now with the tap you can charge the speaker with that USB port however the tap does come with a charging base enabling you to pick up your speaker in a much more streamlined and intuitive method purses need to plug it in or pull out the cable each time now on the bottom of the speaker the charging contact allows your speaker to charge in any direction when on that charging base regarding battery life Amazon claims up to nine hours of life which is on par with other small bluetooth speakers that I've reviewed so far from my test that 50% volume and having me to play all day the tap died in 10 hours and 23 minutes now into the moment that you've been waiting for hear the audio test I'll play several samples and then I'll give you my verdict afterwards and there you have it folks the Amazon tap does get pretty loud here for a small speaker in small areas is not as loud as the JBL flip 3 but for sure louder than the ue roll - and several other small bluetooth speakers on the market the bass is okay and it's not underwhelming like the ue roll - which is a good sign but it's not close to being a bass e speaker just enough for casual listening now regarding the mid this works great for podcast and speech in general like Talk Radio NPR and the likes here speech is very clear and it's very distinct as for music though at moderate vibes the mid-level frequencies does absolutely fine for again casual listening it sounds good but it did notice when I turned this up to much higher volumes - a jam out here that mids to highs and then becomes distorted and a little bit jumbled now you do lose that sense of clarity and cleanness you can say in the audio which is somewhat of a downer now like all small bluetooth speakers a spatial sound doesn't exist here and although this claims to have a stereo sound left and right audio channels are not to present either again very similar to other small Bluetooth speakers so I'm not knocking on the tap for that Generale's I see fitting is popping EDM depending on how much bass you normally enjoy hip-hop could work but if bass is a must you've got to look elsewhere now music with more instrumental emphasis this is where it loses some detail though the speaker isn't as articulate at those higher volumes and when listening to string instruments reach their max that's when you really do notice it then overall it's a good casual listening audio experience at medium volume but if you're intending to put this mostly loud while getting ready in the morning or audio quality is a top priority here maybe the JBL flip 3 and foogoo speakers would be a better alternative but in the end here we can't forget why you would purchase the speaker Amazon's own voice assistant is built-in and it works great I'll have any more in-depth review of Alexa in the Amazon echo video which should be coming up soon so look that up on my channel now with the Amazon tap unfortunate you don't get the voice commands like you deal with the echo you do have to physically walk up to the speaker and press that talk line to bring up Alexa a tap someone makes up for this with being very much portable and the allure or reason why we choose this over the echo you can have these same intelligence and assistance from Alexa just like the echo again put in various parts of your home just pick up the tap and have it in your garage have it in your bedroom bring it into the kitchen etc but in my humble opinion providing the consumer the option of using voice recognition would have made the tap amazing as after using the echo or for those who have used Siri on their Apple products or okay Google and their Android devices the voice recognition and being totally hands-free helps tremendously and because it lacks it uses Wi-Fi to stream music and pull up content you do have to make sure that your phone is a hotspot or connect to Wi-Fi networks when you are not at home in the absence of Wi-Fi you can still use the Amazon tap via Bluetooth and stream content that way but it would only be locally to store music and content that is played off of your physical device now once we're outdoors and away from Wi-Fi let's assume that you don't have Wi-Fi at all the Amazon tap essentially becomes a dedicated Bluetooth speaker rather than an assistant so although it's portable the lack of voice recognition for times when your hands are not free or you're on the other side of the room here does pose a slight nuisance but if you can overcome those hurdles and Alexa at least for now is the best virtual assistant that you can have and yes it could answer most questions as other platforms but because it's connected with the Amazon ecosystem and Alexa has her own third-party apps from companies like ESPN and PR ABC etc Alexa can also read audio books make shopping lists and order items from Amazon for your convenience as your Amazon account should be linked up now she's not perfect I'll meet Beth but she seems to be the most robust and information-gathering at the moment so overall the tap is a good device for casual everyday use the audio experience is good again for casual listening Alexa works very well yet at the same time some minor adjustments though could have made a good speaker into a great speaker in my opinion