Xouqoa wrote:The $99 price was a special pre-order price for Prime members only, but it has expired.
I haven't gotten mine yet, but it says it should ship in June, so we'll see. I think it will be a neat gadget.
How's the sound quality on the speaker itself? (Specifically, how does it compare to a Sonos PLAY:1 ?)
It sounds good to me but I'm not an audiophile : ) It's mono of course but fills a room up. Not going to give you mega base. It's the size of a can of pringles.
I find myself using it a lot and I also find myself missing it in whichever room it's not in. I brought it into the bedroom to try it out.
In bedroom I used it for these type things:
Alexa play rain ambiance
-plays rainstorm from prime music. You can tell it to play any of the million songs that are on prime directly or albums. I like to sleep to the sound of rain and usually have it playing all night on my ipad. Echo has a much better speaker.
Alexa what time is it
(I have my room completely dark so unless I want to blind myself by hitting my ipad or iphone, etc, I found asking Alexa the time extremely useful)
Alexa how's traffic (fuck the lousy radio station and it's commercials I listen to for traffic reports, Alexa can tell me now...although not as detailed yet)
Alexa play podcast "insert name of podcast" (I have my set podcast list I listen to each week but never have enough time to listen to them all)
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I only had it in there for two days and miss it already.
In living room...stuff like this:
Alexa what time is it in Japan
I play Black Desert and fishing areas in the game get depleted so knowing what time it is over in Japan helps to know when the good fishing times are.
Alexa set timer for ten minutes (used a lot due to my pasta cooking)
Alexa news flash
Great way to get 5 minutes or so of news. Can customize it so I added sports and tech news to my flash.
Of course, lots of music/podcast stuff. I'll be playing my audiobooks through it as well (anything you play on your iOS/Androice can stream via Bluetooth to it. Also connecting bluetooth is very easy and easy to disconect as well. Once you connect a device you just say "Alexa disconnect" or "Alexa connect" to reconnect that device.
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Echo's default female voice is extremely human-like and pleasant. I've mentioned before that the voice recognition is outstanding as is Echo's ability to detect your voice at normal volume from across the room
Alexa stop, next, pause, etc all work great.
Alexa volume 1-10 works well to raise/lower volume
I'm considering some home automation (lights etc). While in its infancy, Echo is already a great utility but it has a lot of room to grow without needing new hardware since commands are processed remotely. For the paranoid, hitting the mute on top of echo makes the light ring red so you know it's not listening. Even while on all the time, I haven't accidentally set it off. I've always had to say "Alexa" first (which you can change to "Amazon" if you prefer. If you're super paranoid, you can always place a switch between it and the power and turn it completely off when not using it or when doing something illegal in your otherwise boring lives.
Everything I tell Echo to do pops up on my Android tablet (I bought to use with my wireless PicoP projector). Not extremely useful but for voice searches that can't be provided by Alexa, it pops up Wikipedia. I've found the searches to be pretty accurate for songs at least so far.
Another very useful thing is reminders (to do list). "Alexa buy the new Ernest Cline Book" puts the note on your ios/android/pc (all sync'd)
It comes with a remote but I haven't really found the need to use it. I guess if you're lazy and don't want to say "alexa" you can hit the mic button on the remote and ask your question. (has volume forward/reverse, etc on it) i doubt anyone will use the remote much.
Another cool thing you can do is say "Alexa what's playing" and you'll get the name of the song and artist told to you.
sample music commands:
- [Show]
- Music commands
Alexa, what's playing?
Alexa, turn it up.
Alexa, softer.
Alexa, volume 4.
Alexa, mute.
Alexa, stop the music.
Alexa, pause.
Alexa, resume.
Alexa, next song.
Alexa, loop.
Alexa, add this song. (Prime Music)
Alexa, I like this song (when a Pandora / iHeartRadio song is playing).
Alexa, thumbs down (when a Pandora / iHeartRadio song is playing).
Music requests
You can play your own music by importing songs to your Amazon Music library. Import music.
Alexa, play music by Johnny Cash.
Alexa, play Sail by AWOLNATION.
Alexa, shuffle my lounge playlist.
Alexa, play my new music by Mariah Carey.
Alexa, play Skrillex.
Alexa, play the song Thrift Shop.
Alexa, play the album Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits.
Alexa, play some blues.
Alexa, shuffle my new music.
Alexa, play the song I just bought.
Alexa, play some music.
Prime Music
Prime members can enjoy over a million songs and hundreds of playlists for free.
Alexa, play some Prime Music.
Alexa, play music by Icona Pop.
Alexa, play the Sunny Day Classical playlist.
Alexa, add this song.
Alexa, play Santana on Prime music.
Alexa, play I Won't Give Up by Jason Mraz.
Alexa, play some jazz from Prime Music.
Stations, shows & more
Listen to podcasts, shows, and live radio from TuneIn or iHeartRadio. Create custom radio stations from iHeartRadio or Pandora. Link your iHeartRadio and/or Pandora account with Amazon Echo.
Alexa, play a Coldplay station from Pandora.
Alexa, play the program Radiolab.
Alexa, play the station NPR.
Alexa, play 97.3 FM on TuneIn.
Alexa, play Fox Sports on iHeartRadio.