Amazon Echo - anyone have one?

I have 3 echo's and they all used to use alexa,had to change one to echo as it was annoying hearing all 3 turn on :)

Alexa is the main word and she hears me every time but echo has to be repeated sometimes.
 
just got one in white, that will end up in the bedroom, but for now is in the living room, paired it with a samsung smartthings hub and Osram Lightify bulbs, works a treat being able to set dimmable levels etc.
 
The people saying about lack of search/answer ability, has this been turned off or something?

I've not tried on mine recently but when we first got it my 6 (now 7) year old would ask it things and it would come back with the answer pretty much every time.

Can't imagine they have removed this, will try it tonight.
 
I'm waiting on an Amazon gift voucher arriving but when that's here I'm going to order another 2 Echo dot units and 2 more wifi plugs.

One of the dot units will go in the lounge as the one in the kitchen rarely understands 'Alexa, turn on lounge lamps' unless we shout. I'll also put a wifi plug in for a floor standing lamp. The other dot will go in the bedroom and along with the another wifi plug will be for turning the bed side lamps on and off.
 
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bought a Dot on Friday - sort of as a gimmick really - connected to a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen

I can't believe how useful it is !! just being able to put radio on to a certain station, control volume, put spotify track on, timers for kitchen

its FANTASTIC - I'm a convert already
 
It was the kitchen timer thing that made me want to buy one. It's a fairly expensive way of solving a problem but it works brilliantly.

My Amazon gift voucher has arrived but Amazon are out of stock of both colour of Dot which is a bit of a bummer.
 
I'm trying to get my Philips Living Colours Iris working with the Hue app and Alexa. But no luck so far.
 
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I'm assuming this is the megathread for Echo-related things, but just hasn't been posted in for a while. I picked up an Echo Dot today to see what all the fuss is about. It's alright, but there are some pretty huge omissions from what I can tell so far. Can you really set a list of news sources for a flash briefing but not use that as your alarm? The iOS app is fairly terrible as well.
 
Got an Echo Dot the other day. I've got a B&W A7 that sits by the kitchen and usually just plugged a phone directly into it, was considering a Chromecast Audio but the Echo Dot is just a more versatile tool. Perfect kitchen device, play radio, spotify, set timers, get the weather. Haven't looked into any other skills yet.

My main complain is that it doesn't have an optical out, the DAC is a bit crap and the A7 is wasted on it....it's not *awful* though.

No proper multi-accounts is annoying. Google Home has just added it and I think there are rumours Alexa is getting it soon. For now I have the other half's Spotify account linked, and I've switched over to Amazon Music Unlimited so we have them both set up (which is actually pretty good, bit cheaper than Spotify).
 
Other thing I would mention is that Google Assistant is much, much better at answering queries, it remembers the context of your questions so you can ask follow ups, very cool.

Google Home you can just speak to it in whatever language you want, switch between German and English and it understands and responds in kind which is pretty amazing. Alexa you have to manually switch the language in the app :/
 
I prefer my echo dot's to google home. My phone\TV has "Ok Google" voice search so I don't need another one :)
 
I have my dot stream to a BT receiver on my stereo. The audio is actualy not fantastic; I tried steaming from the mac directly and it's better, but then again the Spotify is still quite a bit inferior to the good old 320kbps mp3 I had in itunes... On some songs it's actually quite poor.

Might be my BT receiver box tho, plain old cheapo! Anyone has a suggestion for a good BT->optical and/or analog box?
 
I'm really tempted to get one, mainly as a useful device for my home office where I work 75% of the time, but two niggles come to mind:

- I hear a revised version of the Echo with better sound and a touch screen is coming next month (should I wait?)
- I have some concerns over privacy.

Hmm.
 
Got me a dot last night. Was close to getting GH but the thought of dropping 130 notes on something I just want to try out and might not use when the novelty wears off put me off.
Also like the idea of plugging this into my a.c. receiver.
 
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