Sunday 7 January 2018

Amazon Echo

Hey everyone :)


If you don't know I moved house in October - I moved from a room share in a 5 bedroom house (that I've been in since I moved to England 5 years ago) to a 2 bedroom flat in a new development. My old place was furnished and the new place was un-furnished so we had to buy lots of household equipment - kettle, toaster, microwave etc.

I couldn't help myself on Cyber Monday when I saw Amazon had the Amazon Echo on sale so I picked one up and had it delivered the next day - thanks Prime!!

I managed to pick the Echo up for £69.99 on Cyber Monday - it's normally £89.99. It also comes in a range of different colours - I chose the charcoal fabric design - but there are another 5 you can choose from.

Amazon describe the Amazon Echo as:

A hands-free speaker you control with your voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, answer questions, make calls, send and receive messages, provide information, news, sports scores, weather and more. All you have to do it ask.

Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. It has seven microphones and beam-forming technology so it can hear from across the room - even while music is playing. When you want to use Echo, just say the wake word, "Alexa", and echo lights up and responds to your request.

The 2nd generation Amazon Echo (the one I got) has a 2.5" downward-firing woofer and 0.6" tweeter powered by Dolby, delivering crisp vocals and dynamic bass throughout the room. You can play music from Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn and more.



The Amazon Echo is full of features such as:

"playing music everywhere" - if you have more than one echo or one dot then you can link them into groups and then ask Alexa to play music wherever you want and in as many rooms as you want.

"voice-control your room" - if you have the correct equipment you can link lights, tv, thermostats to Alexa and control it all via her.

"hands-free calling and messaging" - you can easily send messages to anyone with a supported device or the Alexa App. You can also send messages or voice to anyone in your contact book with an Echo device or the Alexa App.

"far-field voice recognition" - underneath the light ring are seven microphones that use beam-forming technology and enhanced noise cancellation.

"Echo has skills" - think Apps for iPhone - basically there are over 25,000 skills for Alexa - some good, and some just utter crap! You "enable" the skill via the Alexa App and then there are voice commands to activate and control it.

"Always getting smarter" - updates are automatic and Alexa is always learning. The more you use her, the more she will adapt to your speech patterns, vocabulary and personal preferences.

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One thing I really enjoy about Alexa is that you can link your calendars to her and she add tell you what you have coming up - Dave and I use the calendar's on our iPhones so we know what each other have going on and don't double book things.

I have Spotify Premium so I always play music in the living room when I'm wandering around tidying up or playing a game. We have a Amazon Dot (the smaller version) in the kitchen so when I'm washing dishes and my hands are wet I just have to shout "Alexa, play ..." and I'm sorted.

I'm really happy with this purchase and glad that I forked out for it! Let me know in the comments below if you have an Echo (or Dot) and what you make her do :)

If you are interested I also did a post/review/unboxing on the Elgato Game Capture Card HD 60 S.



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