Echo Spot - Smart Alarm Clock with Alexa - White

Really, this thing is the bomb! I have hesitated to embrace Echo. I love Amazon and love everything about Amazon, but I find these products usually disappoint. Like Siri, great idea, but she is just so limited and 1/2 the time she has no idea what I want her to do. I find the pitch of my voice usually doesn't work with voice recognition products. For example, if I call Walgreens to get a refill prescription, I usually have to press all the buttons instead of talking to it, because it gets confused.Part of my problem with Siri and voice prompts is that I want to go too fast and they want to go too slow. I can usually go through the prompts faster than listening to the device say everything, and I usually want to use the speaker-phone as well, that creates some delay.Alexa is totally different. In fact, we talk about her, so we have to call her "the one who won't be mentioned" because even eavesdropping on our conversations in the kitchen she will respond. You don't have to talk loud to her, she just hears you. The hardest thing for my husband to adjust to is when talking to Siri, you have to wait for Siri to respond. With Alexa, you just say what you want. You don't have to get her attention with "Hey Alexa!" You just say, "Alexa drop in on Nathan's room" and instantly you are in a speaker conversation with your son upstairs. The quaIity is nice! No one has to raise their voice to speak in them, just a natrual voice conversation. I actually bought these to be an intercom system in my house. If you have ever priced out an intercom system it is incredibly expensive! Also, all the reviews on Amazon are horrible for every intercom system available except for Nucleus, which is $100 bucks a room. For years I have been looking for something. We have a landline cordless phone system in my house that I have been trying to use, but it rings in their rooms and they typically ignore it instead of answer it because they don't even know how to use regular phones anymore!For $30 bucks a room you get all this...-Drop in on your kids' room, you can hear everything they are doing!-Call your kids down to dinner without yelling!-Really! No more yelling in the house, no more "COMING!!!" response. Just "hey, dinner is ready... ok mom, I'll be right down."-No more excuses about why they need their phones in their room at night. Dots can just play any playlist they have in Prime music, Spotify or Pandora.-No more excuses about why they need their phones as alarm clocks. Dots can set alarms.-No more excuses about why they didn't turn their phone in at night. You can set a reminder to tell them to turn their phones into your room at 9pm!-If you are in your room at night and you can hear they are still up, you can drop into their room and tell them to go to bed. You don't have to get up!Plus this thing does millions of other things! In the kitchen, we have the Echo Show. The speaker quality is good. You can have it play any music you want. "Alexa, play some dinner music" and she picks a nice play list. "Alexa, play some calm music" and she picks a relaxing playlist. "Alexa play the Hamilton soundtrack" and she pulls up the soundtrack and plays it, while displaying the words. What could be easier??? I really wanted the Show for recipes in the kitchen so I didn't have to go back to my computer in the office (I know, lazy!). You can say "Alexa, what can I make with chicken and spinach?" And she'll pull up recipes and even videos of the recipes.Speaking of lazy, this thing is great. I have the Spot in my room. When it wakes me up in the morning I ask it to give my the daily briefing. It tells me what is on my calendar for the day, what the weather is like outside, what the top news of the day is and what the traffic is like to work. The only thing I wish it could do that it doesn't is have a battery so I could take it into the bathroom with me in the morning and listen to all that while I am getting ready.Literally, we have had this for 1 day in our house, so I know it can do way more than those things, but for just that it was worth the investment. Today I ordered 2 more dots. One for my office and one for the basement. Now, in every room I can have Alexa do things for me. We don't have any smart lights or appliances, but maybe we will get some. I can tell it to add things to my todo list as I randomly think of them during the day. I can tell it to add things to my shopping list as I am looking in the refrigerator. I can put things in my Amazon cart as I walk around the house instead of running to the computer and adding it to my cart. Literally, I do almost all my shopping (outside of groceries) through Amazon, so I love having this handy device. You can even order through Alexa. I just like putting things in my cart and reviewing it later.On the Spot specifically, the graphics are nice. When it does the daily briefing it actually brings up the CNN anchor in the display. It randomly shows things like the weather. You can do voice/video calls with it. The video between the Spot and the Show is nice. For the money though, the dots work great in the kids' rooms. I don't really need to see them. I just need to speak with them without yelling!If you are hesitating or on the fence, get one. I can't believe I waited this long! The technology has finally caught up. It really works!

We've only had our Alexa devices setup for about two weeks now, so we're definitely still working out the kinks. With that said, this is a review of everything I've noticed of our entire Alexa ecosystem, which includes 2x Echo Dots, 2x Echo Spots, 2x refurbished Echos, and 1x Echo Sub:Pros: Individually, they all work exactly as they should ALMOST all the time (more on that in the cons section). They all look good, and aren't big, ugly hunks of metal and plastic taking up space in your house. They were all incredibly easy to get through initial setup (except the Echo Sub, more below). Music sounds good in all of them, to include the Echo Dots (but it sounds GREAT on the Echos, and fantastic on the Echo/Sub pair).Cons: The voice recognition is almost too good for its own good. We have a fairly open floor plan, with an Echo Spot in the living room and an Echo in the kitchen. Sometimes they both hear a demand, and the wrong device (meaning the one farther away) will respond. I find myself occasionally whispering to an Echo device so its friends don't butt in to the convo.The Echo Sub needed to be reset 3x when I first got it/went to set it up. I had to log in/out of the app a couple times as well before it was recognized and would actually pair to an Echo.Sometimes Alexa tells me she can't complete a request, then my wife (who uses Alexa far less often than I do) will ask the same request and it works...and vice versa. We haven't figured out what we're doing/saying or not doing/not saying for these discrepancies to happen, but hopefully that'll work itself out with time.The most irritating issue I have so far is getting music to play on the "Everywhere" group. Sometimes I say "Alexa play music everywhere" and it just doesn't do it. Sometimes it'll play on only some of the devices, and sometimes it'll only play on the device I was speaking to. Our house is two stories, and we have two kids and a dog, so we spend a ridiculous amount of our time cleaning/walking up and down the stairs. A big part of the reason I bought these was for the music to fill the house while cleaning, and it oftentimes requires me to spend some time arguing with Alexa to get that to happen. It's even gotten to the point where I've had to go into the app and manually select "Everywhere," because the voice command just won't work.Individual components:2x Echo Dots (w/ separately purchased wall mounts): No complaints. They setup just fine, and work perfectly. They're actually bigger than I thought they would be, and look a little clunky mounted to the wall, but overall they don't mess up our aesthetic enough for me to dock them a star or anything. 5/5 would recommend.2x Echo Spots: No complaints again. These were the first two devices we bought, and they worked so well I decided to buy the other devices. My favorite part of these is their ability to pull up security cam footage. My desk is in the basement, so it's nice to say "Alexa show me the driveway" and see who just pulled in, or to say "Alexa show me the front door" when the doorbell rings. I paired these will some web cam covers (also bought on Amazon, of course) so Jeffy and his crew can't record me all day long.2x refurbished Echos (in charcoal): I bought these to play music, and they sound amazing. We'll see how they hold up, given that they're refurbished equipment, but I have my fingers crossed. They also look great, and are not an eye sore like other speakers.1x Echo Sub: The only device that gave me an issue with the setup process. For that, I'd honestly give the Sub 4/5 stars because it really was a pain in the butt getting it properly hooked up. It gave me issues not just connecting to Wifi, but also when pairing with an Echo. Lots of logging in/out of the app, resetting the Sub. Irritating, to say the least. However, with that one star docked, I'd give it a SOLID 4/5 stars. This thing sounds GREAT. I'm a huge music lover, but hip hop/rap is really where my loyalty lies. And I NEED bass when I jam, and this thing delivers bass in spades. Even with the setup issue, I'm planning on buying another for in the basement. If Amazon ever makes a waterproof version, I'll buy one for outside for bbqs/parties too.