I've never been particularly trustworthy of digital voice assistants. Whenever I've used Siri, Cortana or Google Now, they either don't work properly or they're not quite useful enough to really become an integral part of my life. Ultimately, they're a bit of a faff, and it's usually quicker for me to type a query into Google or open up a relevant app. It doesn't help that I feel like an idiot barking orders at my phone.
Truth be told, I still feel a bit of an idiot talking to the Amazon Echo, a new type of voice assistant powered by the company’s own Alexa engine. And yet, this is the first time that I’ve been convinced by any voice assistant, as it not only works well, but does so much more than its phone-based rivals.
Design
Rather than relying on the microphones inside your phone, Echo is a proper, 360-degree speaker that uses Amazon's far-field voice-recognition technology to help listen through the noise of everyday life. It intelligently filters out general household chatter to deliver news, calendar updates, music, traffic information, sports results and answers to various questions on demand. It can struggle with loud background music or when the phone is ringing (although it heard me once I raised my voice), but for the most part, it responds quickly, and on the first time of asking.
^ You can also control Echo via its rotating volume ring and two physical buttons (one to put it on mute, and another to start listening)
This is no doubt due to the Echo’s seven dedicated microphones. Six are placed at equal intervals around the top of the speaker and one in the middle so it can hear you from every direction. This allows you to place it in the centre of a room or off to the side without jeopardizing its listening abilities. You can tell it's working, too, as the blue light ring along the top will change to a lighter shade of sky blue around the relevant microphone when it's listening to you, giving you a neat indication that it knows where you are.
Features
It's easy to setup, too. While you'll mainly be interacting with Echo with voice commands, there's also an Alexa app that acts as Echo's main control centre. Here, you'll be able to connect Echo to your home network and set your wake word, which you'll need to say every time you want to interact with it. It's 'Alexa' by default, but you can also switch it to Amazon or Echo if you prefer.
The app also gives you a complete rundown of each and every request you've asked Alexa, as well as several different menu screens for managing Echo's various functions. There's a Now Playing list for when you're listening to music, a Music and Books tab for setting up Prime Music, Spotify (Premium members only, I'm afraid), TuneIn Radio and Audible, options for setting a timer and alarm, a Skills list (more on that shortly), and a Smart Home menu. You can also peruse the Shopping and To-Do lists which you’ve dictated to your Echo.
The Smart Home menu can be used to control compatible smart thermostats and smart light bulbs, and there’s suppor for Nest, Netatmo, Samsung SmartThings, Honeywell, Hive, Tado, TP-Link's Kasa, and LIFX lightbulbs. I haven't been able to test Echo as a smart home controller yet, but I'll update this review as soon as I've had a chance to put it through its paces.
Skills
Even if you don't have any smart home gadgetry, Echo still has a pretty impressive feature-set, and its Skills list allows you to further expand its abilities. Think of these as additional apps it can use. You're limited to what's available in Amazon's Skill store, of course, but there's still a decent selection available.
For instance, the National Rail skill will let you check in on your commute, while the Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail and Sky News will be able to give you brief new headline summaries from your favourite newspaper. There's also a Radioplayer skill, recipe tutorials from Jamie Oliver, and Just Eat support, where you can ask Alexa to simply re-order your last Just Eat meal. There's also a Skyscanner Flight Search for checking flights, Laundrapp and Uber to name just a few.
It's not completely perfect, though, as it's still missing support for a few key services in my eyes. Avid Evernote or Google Keep users, for instance, will be disappointed to learn that you can only use Amazon's shopping and to-do lists. There's always hope a Keep or Evernote skill might become available in the future. After all, if it can tap into Google Calendar as your main schedule and appointment tool, then hopefully Keep integration won't be too far behind.
Sound quality
Echo is also a competent 360-degree Bluetooth speaker. Its sleek, cylindrical design lends itself well to projecting music around the room, and its 2in tweeter and 2.5in woofer work well together to produce a clean, balanced sound. It can be quite neutral in tone, but that’s no bad thing. It’s neither too warm or too boomy in rock and pop songs, voices are clear and intelligible, and music sounds pleasingly crisp and detailed.
Busy orchestral works didn't fare quite so well, with instruments becoming muddled at higher volume levels, but it's certainly no worse than other £150-£200 Bluetooth speakers I've listened to, such as Panasonic's £170 SC-All05. Likewise, Lang Lang's rendition of Lizst's Liebestraum No. 3 was perhaps a touch restrained at times, sounding a little soft in places as opposed to being tight and controlled, but this is a solid performance for the money.
Using Echo
The key to using Alexa well, though, is learning how to talk to it properly. While it's certainly very good at picking up natural rhythms of speech, such as 'Alexa, how's my commute looking?' or 'Alexa, what's the news this morning?', there are times when you still have to be quite specific.
For instance, to get news from The Guardian (because it's a skill rather than built-in), you have to ask Alexa to open the Guardian and then go through its instructions. Likewise, it can sometimes mistake words or phrases for others – 'news' instead of 'Muse', or 'lifeline' instead of 'Lang Lang', and trying to get Alexa to restart a particular album can sometimes be quite tricky. Sometimes 'Alexa, restart' will work if you're already playing a song, but other times the same command will only repeat that particular song. 'Alexa, replay this album' also tends to only repeat the song, which can seem a bit counterintuitive. There are a few commands in the 'Things to Try' section of the Alexa app, to be fair, but it's not an exhaustive list.
Of course, once you've figured out its quirks, it quickly becomes second nature, as you'll already know how to phrase things correctly. It just takes a while to get used to, especially if, like me, you're used to having a lot of information in front of you on a screen the whole time.
Remembering what you do and don't have in your music library off the top of your head, for example, is quite a different thing to just clicking on a playlist on your PC, but at least Prime members have the added advantage of being able to listen to anything available on Prime Music as back-up if it's not something they've already bought.
Verdict
So will Echo be staying put in my home? Maybe. It's certainly easier to use than other voice-assistants I've tried in the past, and the fact it's already sitting there on a shelf means I don't have to spend time getting my phone out to check the news or weather. I can simply ask a question and Echo will give me an answer. It's also a pretty good speaker, and simply voicing my playlist requests is much simpler than trying to connect a laptop or phone over Bluetooth.
The real test will be how it functions as a smart home controller, as its potential to draw together all these fairly disparate services could be one of Echo's greatest achievements if it does it right. As mentioned previously, I've yet to test Echo with any smart home kit, but I'll update this review accordingly once I've been able to do so.
^ The Echo Dot is a much smaller, cheaper version of Echo, which you can use together with the main unit
And once Amazon launches its smaller, £50 2nd Gen Echo Dot devices on 20 October, you'll be able to use Echo from anywhere in your home, opening up its appeal even further. These are smaller, cut-down versions of Echo without the built-in speaker, but you can still use them to send audio to other speakers by pairing them over Bluetooth or using an auxiliary cable. I'll be adding my thoughts on Echo Dot once review samples are available.
Amazon's Echo certainly does a lot of things right. You'll get more out of it as a Prime customer – and a Spotify Premium account holder, for that matter – but if you like the idea of having a virtual butler at your beck and call to manage your shopping list, read your kids audio books, play music, and generally have something to show off to your friends, then Echo is well worth its £150 asking price, especially if all you want is a fairly cheap Bluetooth speaker to put in your living room.
