Android: Amazon Echo review

Amazon Echo review


I warned the folks in the offices near mine â€" I'd be talking to a strange woman a bit. (We have thin walls.) Having met my darling wife, they came running to see just who it was who could possibly be worthy of so much daytime attention. It's tough to say if their reaction would have been more or less surprising if I'd actually presented them with a human being rather than a small, connected speaker that answers to "Alexa." (It'll also answer to "Amazon," if you prefer. But that sort of turns it from a pseudo-personal interaction back to dealing with tech.)
I've used Echo â€" which I really want to just call "Alexa," but that sort of starts to get weird â€" in my office as well as at home. The former is understandably more quiet than the latter, and I was able to to trigger the "Alexa" hotword by speaking normally, if not a little quietly.

The Amazon Echo apps are exactly the same on iOS and Android â€" but chances are you won't need them much anyway.

Probably what's most impressive about Echo is the latency. Or, rather, the lack thereof. The time it takes for you to speak a command, and then for the speaker to acknowledge and execute the command is next to nil and very impressive. That's alway been my chief complaint about using Google Now on a phone or tablet â€" even when on a device like the Moto X, which, like Echo, is always listening for that hotword. It just takes too long for it to do its thing. (Using voice activation with Google on a desktop browser is a much different experience.)
And I'd argue that Echo is maybe even a little faster and more fun to use that Apple's Siri as well. You don't yet get the same depth of answers, but then again Echo isn't anywhere near as commercialized as the iPhone or Android. It's still (at least in my mind) a more conversational thing. Even more so than with Siri, which leaves a little more room for nuance.
Or maybe it's just that I'm not talking to the phone in my hand. (Never mind the operating system.) I'm just talking. Echo's seven microphone's generally do a good job of hearing me from across the room, even while music's playing. Occasionally it would pick up the hotword but not the command. I wanted to blame myself. Not Alexa. That may be a bit of male chauvinism showing, not wanting to blame this female voice I've been trying to get to understand me.
So say "Alexa, pause," and the music is paused nearly immediately. Say "Alexa, turn it up," and the volume increases nearly immediately. Say "Alexa, give me the headlines" and you'll get your briefing based on NPR and the BBC. You really do feel like you're interacting with the speaker instead of just barking commands at it.
Voice has its limitations, though. I can easily tell Echo to turn the volume up or down, but that just feels a little more arbitrary. At the same time, I can tell Echo to set the volume to a specific volume between 1 and 10. But that means I have to know what it's set to already.
So while voice activation the Echo is really good, it only goes so far in some instances. To that end there's the included remote control (exactly like the one that comes with Fire TV), which lets you adjust the volume or skip tracks or keep from shouting across the room to trigger Echo.
So how's it sound? In just a couple words, not bad. I use Sonos at home. And while Echo is crisp and clear and has a decently defined low end at low volumes, you very quickly realize its limitations as you crank up the music. Echo starts to lose what depth it has as the volume increases, and you very quickly reminded that this isn't the sort of speaker that's going to fill a whole room. It's about what I'd expect from a $200 speaker. But no more.

And then, of course, there's the Amazon Echo app, which isn't horrible. The experience is identical on iOS and Android â€" there's absolutely no advantage to one platform over the other here, which is exactly what you want to see when using an accessory like this. You'll use the app to set up Echo, and sometimes to search if Echo just can't understand what you're saying. (It had a hard time with "iMore show," for example.) And you'll need the app if you want to manage your shopping list. Probably the most important part of the app, though, is the "Things to try" list, which is a lifesaver for figuring out what all Echo can do.