Amazon Echo Auto
An easy way to add voice control to your car, but navigation instructions require improvement
SCORE
PRICE £42 (£50 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/312auto
The Amazon Echo Auto is an intriguing product that begs one question: why does it exist? Yes, it provides a cheap and handy way for owners of older cars to integrate voice-driven smart tech, but what does it add that your phone doesn’t? Especially if that phone has a 3.5mm output, which means you can plug it directly into your car’s stereo.
The good news is that this is a neat device, squeezing all the smarts of an Echo – including a speaker for setup prompts – into a package the size of a small external hard disk. An LED light bar runs along the front of the Echo Auto, which provides similar visual cues to its house-bound brethren. On the right is a micro-USB port used to power the device, alongside a 3.5mm audio jack.
With an air vent mount provided in the box, alongside micro-USB and 3.5mm cables, you have everything you need to add Alexa voice control (and Bluetooth) to your car. The only thing that isn’t provided is the requisite data connection for Alexa to function – that part must be supplied by your smartphone.
The Echo Auto includes eight far-field, noise-cancelling microphones on the top surface as well as the same action and mute buttons you’ll see on other Echo speakers. And it’s excellent at picking up voices. I’ve tried other third-party devices that promise to add voice control to your car but they struggle to compete with road noise and I end up having to repeat myself. A lot. The same is true for smartphones, which means there’s a dangerous temptation to use the touchscreen to achieve what you want to do.
A good start for the Auto, then. The next question to answer is, how useful Alexa is on the road? I’m comfortable with using voice commands in the car: the infotainment system in my Volkswagen Golf supports both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and all I need to do to get this to work is utter the wake phrase or long-press the voice button on the steering wheel and speak my request.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay have limitations, but they’re tuned to the core in-car tasks of finding and setting destinations, replying to and sending texts, receiving and making phone calls, and playing music from Apple Music, Google Music or Spotify.
Alexa is a bumpier ride. While it can do most of these things, it simply isn’t as seamless as Google Assistant or Siri. For example, ask Alexa to navigate to an address or location and it works well – but only if there’s a single option to choose from. Alexa then sends the destination to Google or Apple Maps on your phone, at which point you tap a notification to launch the mapping application and another time to confirm, and you’re off and running.
The extra tap isn’t ideal but it is fairly straightforward to do; just bear in mind that you’ll need to have both your phone and the Echo Auto mounted together to make this setup work. You can enter destinations just as easily without your voice, however – where voice assistants excel is when you’re on the road and want to, for instance, find a petrol station along your route. You can do this quite easily with Google Maps and Apple Maps, but not Alexa.
Another problem arises when a number of options are presented for your search. You asked for “petrol stations near me”, for instance, and Alexa lists three nearby choices. It goes on to explain what you can do with these options but, bizarrely, if you wait until it’s finished before responding, nothing happens. I tried this several times before working out that I needed to talk over Alexa by saying, “Alexa, take me to the first/second/ third one”.
Other core operations are more intuitive. Making a phone call is as simple as saying “Alexa, call Phil”. As long as Phil is in your contacts list, it makes the call for you, after checking it’s got the right name first. You can also send a text message like this, although only with Android phones. If you’re an iPhone user, SMS texting isn’t possible; if you try, Alexa will offer to send a voicemail message.
Music, podcasts, audiobooks and radio stations work as well as they do on a regular Amazon Echo device, and the same holds true for Alexacompatible smart home gear. Anything you can do with your regular Echo speakers, you can do with the Echo Auto.
So the Echo Auto is has particular uses for owners of older cars, and its microphones do a great job of cutting through the roar of road noise. If you’re driving a car that doesn’t include Bluetooth, or your phone/ hands-free kit just isn’t cutting it any more, £50 is a decent price for something that will add wireless connectivity and make things such as playing music and radio both easier and safer while you’re out on the road.
But most people – even those using their phone on a dashboard mount for navigation – are probably better off sticking with what they have got. Why? Because Alexa simply isn’t as good at the core driving tasks as Google Assistant or Siri.
SPECIFICATIONS
8-mic array Bluetooth (HFP, A2DP and AVRCP) micro-USB power supply 3.5mm audio jack 85 x 47 x 13.3mm (WDH) 45g 1yr RTB warranty
“The Echo Auto has its uses for owners of older cars, and its microphones do a great job of cutting through the roar of road noise”