Amazon’s budget friendly Echo Dot – a review and introduction to Alexa

The Echo Dot is Amazon’s cheapest smart device featuring the Alexa voice assistant. But what exactly is it?

Basically it’s a Bluetooth speaker which can respond to voice commands. You can ask it questions, for example:

• Alexa, what’s the weather today;
• Alexa, what’s 100g in ounces:
• Alexa, who is Winston Churchill.

Or you can ask it to set timers, reminders and alarms.  Or add items to a shopping list, for example:

• Alexa, set a timer for 5 minutes;
• Alexa, remind me in 30 minutes to book the Drake for dinner;
• Alexa, set an alarm for tomorrow at 7am;
• Alexa, add eggs to my shopping list.

My favourite feature is being able to play and control music and radio all through voice commands. This works best, if you have it connected to a music service like Amazon Music.

If you have an Amazon Prime account, you have a decent choice of music already included with Prime Music, or you can activate Amazon’s complete music library for a single Echo device for £3.99 ($3.99) a month.

Then to control your music or radio, you can say:

• Alexa, play Radio 4;
• Alexa, play Jack Johnson or play Debaser by the Pixies;
• Alexa, play a song that goes like “thunderbolts and lighting, very very frightening”.

If you have any Smart Home Gadgets in your house, for example some Philips Hue smart lights, you could ask Alexa to turn them on for you.

They are many “Skills” you can download to extend the capabilities of Alexa. For example you’ll need to download the Hue skill before you can control your lights. Or if you want to control your Sonos speaker in the living room, you could download the Sonos skill and say:

• Alexa, play This Charming Man in the living room.

Alexa has over 15,000 Skills just now, some more useful than others. But you should be able to find some useful to you.

Setup

The Echo Dot is a compact device, with the footprint of a coffee mug and about an inch tall. It comes with a micro-USB charger and no internal battery, so it has to be powered at all times. But there’s nothing stopping you using it with a portable power pack.

Beside the micro-USB port is a standard 3.5mm auxiliary port to plug in some optional speakers which I’ll discuss further shortly.

It has just four buttons, two to control volume up and down, a multi-function action button, and a mute button that stops Alexa listening.

Once you plug it in, a blue ring light begins to spin which then changes to orange after a minute. You’ll then be greeted and prompted to download the Amazon Alexa app on your smartphone. Follow the prompts to connect to your WiFi network and complete the setup. You’ll be asked to select how you want to use your Echo Dot: via Bluetooth, with an audio cable or as is with no external speakers.

You’re then ready to start using the speaker. It’s always listening, so you can immediately try some of the commands in the introduction.

Sound Quality

Even taking into consideration its size, the Echo Dot doesn’t sound as good as I would have expected. For listening to Alexa’s responses and perhaps the radio, its built in speaker is adequate. But for music I would highly recommend pairing it with some better speakers. You have three options; the simplest being to use the 3.5mm auxiliary port. Plugging in some decent powered computer speakers is a huge improvement, but you could also plug the Echo Dot into your HiFi. Amazon don’t provide any auxiliary cables, so you’ll need to purchase the correct cable for your stereo.

The second option is to connect to a Bluetooth speaker, which you need to do the first time via the Alexa app. Go to Settings | Echo Dot | Bluetooth and pair your speaker. Next you just need to say:

• Alexa, connect my speaker.

Even connecting to an inexpensive battery powered speaker, the sound is noticeable improved.

Lastly, if you own any Sonos wireless speakers, you can use voice commands to control them via the Echo Dot. Only the music will play out through the Sonos speakers, not Alexa’s responses. But this feature alone may be enough for your to justify buying at least one Echo Dot if you already have Sonos.

Voice recognition

The Echo Dot’s voice recognition is impressive. You don’t need to speak particularly clearly or even be that close for it to recognise your commands. It did well even with a barrage of questions from my children, recognising natural speech the majority of time.

Although it usually recognises questions, it often struggles with answers, for example:

• Alexa, what is the latin name for the autumn crocus?

Whereas both Siri and the Google come up with the correct answer. Of course Google is always going to have a significant advantage over other services, being able to draw on its own extensive database.

Using the Echo Dot as a Bluetooth speaker

It’s also possible to use the Echo Dot as a Bluetooth speaker, to stream music or the audio from a YouTube video from your phone for example. Say:

• Alexa, pair.

Then search for the speaker from your phone’s Bluetooth settings:

In the future you can connect, or disconnect by saying:

• Alexa, connect my phone, or;
• Alexa, disconnect my phone.

This makes more sense if you have external speakers attached to the Echo Dot, otherwise the volume and quality is only slightly better than the phone’s own speaker.

Multiple Echo devices as an intercom

If you know someone else with an Echo device, it’s possible to make free calls to them over your internet connection. And it’s also possible to “drop-in” on them without them even picking up. Fortunately this feature has to be explicitly enabled in the Alexa app. 

I don’t know anyone else with an Echo device, and I can’t see any time when I’d want them “dropping-in” unexpectedly. Although it could be useful for elderly relatives.

A more useful feature to me at least, is the ability to “drop-in” on other Echo devices in your household – basically an hands free intercom. So if I’m in the shed with an Echo Dot I could say:

“Alexa, drop in on the kitchen”.

The Kitchen Echo in this case will chime and I could then communicate with this room as I like. To finish the chat, say:

“Alexa, hang up”.

To setup, you’ll need more than one Echo device and you’ll need to name them appropriately. For each device, in the Alexa App, go to: Settings | Tap on Echo Device | Device name.

On the same page under Drop in. Turn on “Only my household”. 

Then tap on the messaging icon at the bottom middle of the Alexa app’s screen. Tap on the user icon towards the top right and tap on your name. Enable “Your household can drop on to your Echo devices”. And that’s it.

Verdict

The Echo Dot is a reasonably priced entry into the world of Alexa. It has impressive voice recognition and with some external speakers attached and a music subscription, it makes for a very capable smart speaker. And through the large database of Skills, it can can extended in a variety of ways to suit you.

On its own, the audio quality is not really good enough for music, and Alexa’s knowledge database is lacking compared to Google’s, but at £50 or $50 or a lot less in Amazon’s many sales, overall I would recommend it. 

Pros

• Voice recognition and Alexa’s natural responses are very good;
• With some external speakers attached, an impressive smart speaker;
• Integration with many “smart home” devices such as Sonos and Philips Hue;
• Over 15,000 Skills for extending its capabilities further;
• Compact and discrete.

Cons

• Audio quality is a little disappointing – would recommend at least connecting some computer speakers;
• Voice recognition can struggle if playing music or sounds at higher volumes. Can be frustrating turning off an alarm for instance;
• Limited database to draw on for general questions compared to Google Home for example;
• No aux cables supplied;
• Has to be powered, no internal battery.

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If you have found this article useful please consider clicking on the link(s) below for for more information on products discussed in this article.  You pay the exact same price and it’ll enable me to keep these articles coming!

Amazon Echo Dot
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2DaYzIH

Amazon Echo
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2DdlSBB

Sonos One (with Alexa)
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2DdB6Xp

Sonos Playbar
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2BjSXvw

Rockbox Round
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2BmNrbu