Cool little gadget…. A lot of hype. And not sure how much
value it still adds… but at 50 Sterling Pounds it is a cool little gadget. And
I do like my gadgets.
So why do I say I’m not sure how much value it adds? Well
for one thing, voice recognition is good but still has quite a few faults.
Especially if your accent is not quite American or proper English orr one of
the dialects they have obviously trained Alexa for. So my accent is a mixture
of various accents from all over the world. I enunciate, but sometimes I don’t
pronounce certain words exactly as Alexa would expect… and off she goes doing
something else.
Another bug bear I have is that Amazon have chosen to use
Bing as the search engine of choice and sometimes the simplest things I can ask
“Ok Google”, Alexa has trouble finding. This is seriously frustrating knowing
that the answer is there from Google and if I was to move away from Alexa it
would most likely be for this reason mainly if Googles offering comes to Europe
soon.
Saying this Alexa still is a pretty cool toy J
Her integration skills with a lot of home automation gadgets
is pretty good though limited for the key ones I use such as Smartthings and
the Sonos. For example I would really like to be able to ask Alexa if the front
door is closed and for her to check with Smartthings and respond. Or for me to
ask “Alexa, are all the windows closed” or “Alexa, are lights in the Living
room still on” or “Alexa, is the TV in my sons room still on”. And at the
moment all you can do is ask to turn stuff on and off. Sonos integration is
also limited and via IFTTT and Smartthings, but I hear this may change soon.
So hopefully in this year there will be more skills added
that will make the Echo Dots I have more than just cool toys.
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