THE SET-UP: AMAZON ECHO

AMAZON ECHO’S VOICE SERVICE MAKES CONTROLLING YOUR SMART DEVICES A BREEZE

Discover Alexa – and how this powerful voice assistant can control your connected home

We show you how to set up a key piece of connected home tech. Get ready for...

Until you try Amazon Echo, it’s difficult to fathom just how good this device is. Sitting discreetly on your table or worktop, it offers a whole new world of voice control, enabling you not only to ask it to play your favourite music (it integrates with Spotify, TuneIn and Prime music among many more) but also set timers, get conversions on weights and measurements and much, much more.

What’s truly exciting about Amazon Echo is its ability to control pretty much every mainstream smart home device out there. Imagine being able to simply ask for your lights to come on, or your heating to turn up, or your kettle to boil. Well, with Amazon Echo and its voice service, Alexa, that’s exactly what you can do. And it’s simple to set up.

Firstly, you need to download the Amazon Alexa app, then sign in with your Amazon account (or register for one if you’re not already a member). Then it’s simply a matter of following the app’s instructions to add a new device. There are three Amazon Alexa products out there – the Echo, the Dot and the Tap. The former two are the most interesting by far and feature full voice control by just saying ‘Alexa…’. The latter is a portable Bluetooth speaker that requires you to press a button to activate voice control.

The Echo (US$179.99, $240.40) and Echo Dot (US$49.99, $66.80) work the same way, the difference being the Echo is an excellent speaker – the Dot has a speaker, but you can connect it to a 3.5mm jack or a Bluetooth speaker for better sound. With Amazon coming to Australian shores soon, we thought we’d get you ready and get them set up early...