Amazon Echo Spot
amazon.com
amazon.com
> Call anyone hands-free, or make video calls to family and friends with an Echo Spot, Echo Show, or the Alexa App. Instantly connect to other Echo devices around your home.
I understand that Amazon wants to push their calling features but they're really of zero interest to me. Video calling is always a disappointing experience regardless of who is implementing it. The voice calling that only calls other Echo devices or POTS using an unknown number is also of little interest.
Personally I send any calls from numbers I don't know to voicemail, and I know many people who do the same. I would much rather have Alexa recognize my voice and use my phone to initiate calls.
I'm a Google Home owner, so perhaps it's a case where the grass is always greener :-)
Get me voice recognition that actually understands language and can be corrected to learn what I want in even the most basic ways and I might change my mind. Adding cameras and screens only makes a creepy device creepier. I don't trust a company that sells me things designed primarily as vectors to sell me more things.
Please don't assimilate me.
Kidding aside I found Siri likes a southern draw, probably has something to do with elongation of the vowel sounds and enunciation. Basically pretend to be Forrest Gump and you're good to go.
I can ask the Google Assistant to call anyone in my contacts and it happens, if I ask for a map to their house it fails horribly.
My statement was to establish context, stating that the Google Assistant has access to my Contacts because it can lookup a contact by name, pull the associated phone number, and execute a phone call. However, it cannot map directions to that Contact's address. I know it can Map directions because I use that heavily, it obviously can access contact information, and it can comprehend that a term is a contact name. So the pieces are all their, they just don't seem to fit together for whatever reason.
I'm going to guess that Alexa cannot map to someone's house either but I don't have an Echo Show so that's not something I can test. I also disabled the calling features because I have an objection to the way Amazon has implemented them.
If Amazon offered Alexa for your phone as a replacement for the Google Assistant, I might consider switching if it could handle Maps and Calls at least on par with the Google Assistant. And assuming it's calling functionality was the crap offered on the Echos. Timers and Reminders are about all I use the Google Assistant for beyond that and Alexa already handles those functions with ease.
On the other hand, on Alexa I can't say "play fleetwood mac in the living room" (via chromecast). That single feature is nearly enough to send me to Google Home, except for the reasons I mentioned above...but I feel hesitant to stick with Alexa when I know the only reasons it can't do what I want are stupid.
But the Google Home ecosystem isn't so great yet, so I don't want to jump into that basket.
I've been messing with some of the open source alternatives (+Raspberry Pi), and they're all pretty rough. I plan to spend some time to put together something easier to use, but it's a tall order.
But Alexa does seems to have a head-start with third-party integration and services. So for now I own one of each. I'm hoping that maybe both of them will reach parity at some point and I can finally settle on one of them.
Alexa, Siri, Google Home, Cortana.. they could all use the same standards to become interoperable.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/19/leak-details-google-home...
1) These look like (horrible) renders. Do they not have working ones to show before announcing?
2) None of the photos show a power cord, are these battery powered or just trying to make them look "sexier" than they are?
(In practice, the power cord would run down the back-side of a bedside table.)
Ultimately, I'm not too interested in using voice interfaces as they currently are. I'm not trying to knock the product, I feel the same about Siri and Google's assistant. Lots of improvements have been made, but its just not for me yet.
At least it makes a good bluetooth receiver for my car, though it does whine to me about not having an internet connection at the beginning of every drive.
These actually fill my needs better, since I don't need the fancy speakers and these look way slicker. The Echo Show is amazingly ugly. And this is a full $100 cheaper.