Amazon Echo
The Echo was launched in the US in June 2015, and we’ve had to wait an agonising 15 months to get it in the UK. I say agonising because ever since learning about what the Echo can do, I’ve wanted to get one and see if it’s as good as it sounds.
Price
There are two versions of the Echo available in the UK. The main one (pictured) costs £149 from Amazon and comes in black or white. There’s also the Echo Dot, which is £49 from Amazon. This also comes in black and white and differs from the Echo only in that it doesn’t have the same high-quality speaker inside it, which also makes it considerably smaller.
Design
The Echo is 235mm tall (around 9in) and has two buttons on top. One mutes the microphone to prevent Alexa hearing you, and the other is an action button that has various uses including stopping timers or alarms and putting the device into Wi-Fi setup mode.
Around the top is a light ring that tells you when Alexa is working, the volume level and if there’s an issue with Wi-Fi or internet connectivity. There’s also a volume ring for turning it up or down, but you can do this by asking Alexa to “turn it up” or saying, “Alexa, volume 5”.
Inside are two speakers, a 2.5in woofer and a separate tweeter. Sound quality is decent, particularly when Alexa is speaking, but it’s far from the best-sounding speaker for music at higher volumes and there are better speakers at this price.
However, if you’re going to use it in the kitchen or a bedroom, the volume and quality are fine. You can also use it as a Bluetooth speaker and play music from your phone.
Setup
Install the Alexa app on your iPhone, Android device or Amazon Fire tablet, pop in your Amazon account and password, since it uses this for various things, including keeping a history of what you’ve asked Alexa to do, as well as to make orders by voice and to get an update on those orders.
Like most Wi-Fi gadgets, it scans and asks which network to connect to and after you’ve selected your router and connected, you’re good to go. There’s no voice training: anyone can speak to Alexa. (The Voice Training option previously seen in the US version of the app is absent from the UK version, so if you have a particularly thick accent that Alexa doesn’t understand there’s nothing you can do about it, but everyone that tested the Echo has been understood without any issues.)
At this point you can start using Alexa to do things such as setting alarms, timers and even telling jokes, but a little more configuration (such as setting your location in the app) will give you things such as local weather forecasts and news briefings. In fact, you can even customise which news outlets provide your updates.
Sky News updates, for example, are pre-recorded headlines such as those you’d hear on the radio. Try and listen to the Guardian app’s headlines though, and Alexa has to read the RSS feed, which doesn’t work nearly as well. Newspaper headlines tend to be nuanced and don’t work well with text-tospeech engines. As good as Alexa is, the lack of human intelligence means the intonation isn’t there, and headlines can often be hard to understand. Similarly, if you say “Alexa, good morning” you’ll get a greeting and a fact of the day. Sometimes it’s wordy and difficult to understand.
Incidentally, if you or someone in your household is called Alexa, you can change the ‘wake word’ in the app to Amazon or Echo. Unfortunately, you can’t change it to any word you like.
The basic stuff is great, but where things get really exciting is when you add Skills to Alexa. Skills are in essence apps that you ‘enable’ in the Alexa app.
As with app stores you can browse what’s available in different categories, or search for what you’re after. They’re all free, at least those that are available now.
As we have a Nest thermostat and a couple of LIFX smart lights, we went for those first and was ecstatic to see they were there and ready to add. Within two minutes, we’d linked my LIFX account and was able to say, “Alexa, turn on the lights in the lounge”. Sure enough, the bulbs lit up immediately.
The Echo is the first device that’s able to bring together different types of IoT gadgets from different manufacturers using different standards, and that’s what makes it so great. Apple’s HomeKit is a
good idea, but it forces you to buy HomeKit-compatible devices.
But manufacturers can easily make their existing products work with Alexa, so we hope that Alexa’s Skills will expand rapidly now that the Echo has launched.
If you happen to own kit that works with the Echo then you’ll be far happier than if you’ve bought a thermostat, smart lights or other gadgets which aren’t yet supported. For example, we also have some Chinese smart light bulbs – there’s no support for these. Nor are Sengled bulbs, or the Heat Genius smart thermostat.
Generally, if you have the most popular kit, such as Philips Hue bulbs, you’ll find support. More obscure products tend to be missing. There are a few exceptions, of course. Tile is one of the most popular Bluetooth trackers, but the Echo doesn’t work with it. But it does support TrackR, so you can link your account and ask Alexa to find your wallet, keys or whatever you’ve attached the tracker to.
There are other Skills, such as National Rail, which can give you train times and whether there are any delays. Once the Skill is enabled, you can set up your usual commute by voice with Alexa and then ask, “Alexa, is my train delayed this morning?” or “Alexa, when is the next train to Charing Cross?”
The ability to use natural language means you generally won’t have to learn set phrases to make things work. However, some skills do require this, or at least mention the ‘app’ when making the request. We installed Cat Facts – one of the Skills we found while browsing – and this forces you to say “Alexa, ask Cat Facts to give me a cat fact”. You can’t just say “Alexa, give me a cat fact”.
Music is one of Alexa’s specialities. As well as playing tracks you’ve uploaded to your Amazon account, it can also play from Prime Music or Spotify (assuming you have a subscription to such services). If you request a track and it isn’t in your personal library, Alexa will try Prime Music. (Amazon has just announced its new Music Unlimited subscription in the US, which is a standalone service to rival Spotify – it’s coming to the UK later this year.)
You can say all the things you’d expect to be able to, such as “Alexa, shuffle my music”, or “Alexa, play some jazz” as well as asking for particular songs, albums or artists. If you’ve set up playlists, you can also ask Alexa to play those, too.
TuneIn is one of the built-in skills, and lets you listen to most popular UK radio stations. All you need to do is ask Alexa to “play Radio 2 in TuneIn”. You can do the same with podcasts, but you always have to add “in TuneIn” otherwise it gets confused and does nothing. There are other apps which have similar functions, so you can enable Radio Player and say “Alexa, launch Radio Player” and then “play LBC” or whichever is your favourite station.
Limitations
Alexa is a capable assistant, but it does have limitations. Although you can link your calendar, you can’t hook up your email or a phone for text messages. Therefore, Alexa cannot read out incoming emails or messages. Notifications are pretty much non-existent, too. Alexa can’t even tell you that you’ve got a new email. Hopefully Amazon is working on this, but one reason for the absence could be down to the fact that the Echo doesn’t know whether you’re around or not. Reading out notifications when you’re mowing the lawn or aren’t even at home is pointless, but this could be fixed by allowing Alexa to use your phone’s GPS location and then confirming you’re nearby by saying something like “I have a new notification, do you want to me to read it?” and then waiting for a response.
Another slight issue is that Alexa will occasionally respond when children speak to it. We found it doesn’t generally recognise kids’ voices for whatever reason, but it can be annoying when it does, especially if your kids are attempting to make Alexa play their favourite song.
In fact, there are no profiles so Alexa treats all commands equally, no matter who is issuing them. So you can’t restrict her to only responding to you. If a visitor arrives, they can say “Alexa, play Roar by Katy Perry” and it will oblige even if you despise the track.
Alexa can’t take multiple commands, so you have to make each request individually. This slows things down, and doesn’t feel natural. It would be nice to be able to say “Alexa, turn the lights on in the lounge, set the heating to 20 degrees and give me my flash briefing” but you have to do each in turn, waiting for the previous request to complete.
One other gripe: there’s not yet support in the UK for IFTTT (If this then that). It’s there in the US, but until it arrives this side of the pond you won’t be able to control devices that are IFTTT compatible but don’t yet work with Alexa directly. Plus, of course, you can’t use all your other IFTTT recipes to do things which aren’t hardware based.
Verdict
The Echo is one of the most exciting gadgets in years and has huge potential. Being able to control smart home gadgets by asking while you’re doing something else, is not only brilliant fun but is also genuinely useful. Jim Martin