Gadgetory

here's what my life is like right now I'm cooking or lying in bed or playing video games and I suddenly remember oh I need more batteries or I need to pick up my laundry in exactly 24 minutes maybe I just want to hear some Dave Matthews Band like right now in every one of those cases I do the same thing I say Alexa and then command Alexa to do something set a timer add batteries to my shopping list play ants marching and crewed up and this thing this black cylinder about the size of a can of tennis balls that's sitting on my shelf responds the echoes to things it's a Bluetooth speaker and it's a personal assistant let's get that first one out of the way now it's a terrible Bluetooth speaker it has this really awkward connection system and just bad tinny shallow sound since it has to be plugged in all the time you really can't take it anywhere it's just never going to replace a real wireless speaker even being able to search for music is nice but not when it's just prime music I Heart Radio and tune in but of course calling the echo a Bluetooth speaker is like calling KITT from Knight Rider a car the whole point is everything else the echo can do everything Alexa can do you can change her name by the way if you have someone named Alexa or Alexis in your house but you can only change it to Amazon so if your son and daughter are named Amazon and Alexis you're basically just screwed Alexa I can add things to a really basic to-do list in the companion app or to a shopping list but no she can't just randomly order things for you that show up in two business days though that would be awesome Alexa can also take basic commands and answer basic questions I think half the time I used it to check the weather or find out how many tablespoons are in a cup one cup equals sixteen tablespoons but from telling jokes to looking things up to telling you the time Alexa is an incredible fountain of useful information how many ears does Captain Kirk have three his left ear his right ear and his final frontier and most of the time it works and when it does it feels like magic Alexa can also tell you when the Civil War ended or who won the Knicks game last night although I guess I should say she usually will tell you these things because sometimes she just won't sometimes Alexa doesn't hear me right even in super quiet rooms and sometimes she hears me right but refuses to answer the question instead making me open up the companion app and go through my search history to find it the app is fine and it works on Android and iOS in addition to Amazon's devices but it's also a hundred percent not the point of this device to make it ever so slightly easier for you to search the internet with an app for the most part it does work in a quiet room but as soon as you say Alexa play some music and some weird prime music playlist comes on it's just over she can't hear you anymore she won't tell you she doesn't hear you either the blue at the top comes on as if she's doing something and then it just goes off for all the reasons that the echo feels so simple when it works it's maddeningly unhelpful when it doesn't yeah sure you can press the button on the top to make sure the echo is listening but by the time I've walked all the way over there to do it it would be easier to just pick up my phone there's also a remote but taking that out of my pocket is as much work as taking my phone out of my pocket I mostly think Amazon was smart to make you plug in the echo to use it because it means you don't need to worry about it being charged and turned on all the time but the idea that you can just leave the echo where it is and use it anywhere it's just not true you'd have to buy basically one for every two or three rooms which is just crazy I've found it most useful in the kitchen where I'm always doing other things with my hands anyway so I left my echo there the thing about the echo and with any voice control device right now is that it works a lot and when it works it's awesome but by the time I've spent two minutes yelling Alexa volume three while she blasts whatever Huey Lewis and the news song she found on Amazon Prime I just give up if the echo were a great Bluetooth speaker I'd say buy this thing right now it's going to get better fast as it gets more apps more content and more smarts and it's almost worth it just to have a voice controlled way to add things to my shopping list while I play video games but for $199.99 pker and it's the craziest most unreliable personal assistant ever she's the best until she's the worst until she just completely ignores you while she plays Katy Perry at her desk I want the echo to be great and I want one in my house I think it'll get there but it probably won't be this version