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Amazon Echo

Winston

Winston

Give me convenience or give me death
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Well, my sister's getting hitched soon, so I'm thinking about wedding gift options. My brother in law is into tech stuff. He's got a personal drone and I have no doubt "smart-home" technology would be of interest to him. My sister cares less and would probably be satisfied with basic cable and a dvr. But, I still think she may be surprised when she uses the hands free surfing/movies/music of the Echo.

Personally, I've never used an Echo. Has anyone here used one? How far along is the voice recognition technology? When it first came out it was more nuisance than advantage, but, I'm hoping advancements have been made to account for mumbled words and various dialects. I know you say the word "Alexa" to activate the device, and then you just freely tell it what you want it to do. And it performs the action on your smart tv. Anyone have one? Do you love/hate it?
 
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Winston said:
Well, my sister's getting hitched soon, so I'm thinking about wedding gift options. My brother in law is into tech stuff. He's got a personal drone and I have no doubt "smart-home" technology would be of interest to him. My sister cares less and would probably be satisfied with basic cable and a dvr. But, I still think she may be surprised when she uses the hands free surfing/movies/music of the Echo.

Personally, I've never used an Echo. Has anyone here used one? How far along is the voice recognition technology? When it first came out it was more nuisance than advantage, but, I'm hoping advancements have been made to account for mumbled words and various dialects. I know you say the word "Alexa" to activate the device, and then you just freely tell it what you want it to do. And it performs the action on your smart tv. Anyone have one? Do you love/hate it?
Click to expand...

We got 2. 1 in the kitchen and 1 in my Man Cave.

It's good, but we mostly use it for music and radio stations. I buy a ton of things on Amazon, but I've never used it for that reason.

Sorry I couldn't be more help. For us it's just a glorified radio/music player. That's not a complaint, for that it works well. But that's all we use it for. The voice recognition for that is good, BUT you have to say the words it is expecting to do a task and in the correct order, and sometimes that is frustrating..
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
We got 2. 1 in the kitchen and 1 in my Man Cave.

It's good, but we mostly use it for music and radio stations. I buy a ton of things on Amazon, but I've never used it for that reason.

Sorry I couldn't be more help. For us it's just a glorified radio/music player. That's not a complaint, for that it works well. But that's all we use it for. The voice recognition for that is good, BUT you have to say the words it is expecting to do a task and in the correct order, and sometimes that is frustrating..
Click to expand...

Thanks for your insight!
 
I'm really into smart house tech so I have an Echo or Dot in several rooms. I use it all the time. It can control every light in my house as well as the AC/Heat system. When I say, "Alexa, set movie time", the lights dim down, the Tv turns on, and the movie selection comes up. I have lots of spoken commands programmed into it. It is a fun little hobby.
 
If you use another speaker, you can get the dot as we have and save the money and space. The real benefits are to link them to other controllers. We turn on and off lights and indirectly control Sonos speakers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I love mine! Its my radio, my alarm clock, turns my lights on, answers questions, etc.
 
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