Below is the regular reference set on this blog for what Amazon's Echo is said to do, plus beta-run customers' discussions of that, and an early news-site review when Amazon had generally not been sending out review copies of the device, while they gathered info on what the more or less paying beta-testing customers wanted from it. Amazon's been adding features daily, as reported in the forum threads.
Amazon Echo - $99 for Prime
Echo-tests video + discussions 1, 2
ZDNet review + What's inside?
[Added 1/15/15]
Explained in video by fast-talkers
The taller guy talks so fast that I had to turn Youtube's Closed Captions ON. Alexa understood him better than I did.
Note: If you decide to go ahead and buy it after having gotten a notice or 'invite' (if you had signed up for a notice), it'll say $199, but after going through the Cart process, they apply the PRIME member discount of $100, for a total of $99 before tax.
Another household Amazon account under your Prime acct gets the $99 Prime price also.
Note 2: Availability is 4-6 months.
More on this later, but the discussions linked to will help.
Got mine yesterday. Interesting questions to ask include: "What's the meaning of life?" or "Is Santa real?" or "I love you" or "Am I pretty?" :) I think it's an interesting concept, but the issue is that with Google Voice, S Voice, Siri, and any number of other verbal response engines out there, why would anyone pay several hundred dollars to have an always-on "Siri" in the room with them, with much more limited functionality? I'll continue to try it out and it's a novelty for me at $100, but I think this product might be a dud unless there's some other kind of value included.
ReplyDeleteTyler -- No-hands requests while working on things at home: news, general info, timers, music requested (w/ Next/Previous command) but a lot of other things you'll see if you read the discussion threads I linked to. You can ask it to Wiki a topic to get an answer if 'she' doesn't know. This one will not be a dud. Prime songs (over a million songs to choose from) upon voiced request, iHeart, Pandora, Spotify, your own library music, iTunes, another household member's music - with individual song requests. Marketing right now is mainly to Prime members at that $99 price while they're growing the knowledge features.
DeleteI saw a couple of reviews in the last month that said it responds faster on what it knows than the others do, and its knowledgebase is being built via the customer base's requests. Would like to read what you think or find as you try it out the next couple of weeks.