Amazon Echo No Longer Needs an Invite; Now Available to Anyone for $180 and Ships July 14

[dgstorm]

Well, and then you bring up some of the other issues. Yes, it allows you to listen to music, but the selection for it I have found to be limited. And even more annoyingly, more than once when I have asked to listen to a specific song, or a specific artist, instead of playing what I request, it plays a poor cover version of it. And, for example, if you ask Alexa to play a classical playlist, it'll generally play the same grouping of songs each time. Annoying.

And while yes, you can ask it about the weather or traffic, it can only tell you based on what you pre-select in settings. Which means it'll only ever tell you the traffic for one destination and weather for one location, which you have to log into the Echo app to update. When I am out of town, or looking for weather when packing to go on a trip, or looking to see how long it will take to get me somewhere other than work, the Echo is worthless.

As I said before, it has a lot of potential. But for right now, it lags fairly significantly behind apps such as Google Now. For a pricetag of $180, I am not sure that's a good thing.

You can use it with Pandora and other music services, and you can even queue up your own Amazon Prime uploaded music playlists, so if your music is limited, you are doing it wrong. lol!

 

[dgstorm]

Then you're doing your laundry all wrong...

Please share your secret life-hack about how to do laundry right. I am honestly curious how to make it fun.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Please share your secret life-hack about how to do laundry right. I am honestly curious how to make it fun.

If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret anymore, now would it?

 

[cr6]

I agree with Stormy...unless you have spent some time using one, it's hard to imagine it being much more than a pretty Bluetooth speaker. Just as its hard for me to justify wearing or using a smartwatch, I can't completely rule one out until I've spent more than 15 minutes in Best Buy using one.
Would I pay the original retail of $199 or even 180 for this device....not likely....but after spending a month with ours I'd easily pay 150. So in the end, it was absolutely worth every penny of the $99 I spent. Especially given the fact that I've spent much more than that for a standalone BT speaker.
Like any electronic device, the way you use it will determine it's value or significance. We've used ours everyday since it arrived and the more we use it the better it gets. The better it gets, the more we use it.
Is it for everyone? Probably not. Sure you can perform many of the same functions through your phone, but once you really learn how to use this device to your advantage, it's so much more than a glorified egg timer or BT speaker.
As always... just my 2 cents.

S5 tap'n

 

[Powarun]

Got mine today, so far it works pretty darn well. Had a few amazon credits to afford to purchase a few songs that weren't on prime for free. I'm looking forward to trying to add a Wemo lightswitch and get things a little more set up.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Please share your secret life-hack about how to do laundry right. I am honestly curious how to make it fun.

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[dgstorm]

Holy crap! I remember that ancient commercial! lol!

 

[mountainbikermark]

Holy crap! I remember that ancient commercial! lol!

I was a bit surprised it showed up at the top of the search list. It came into my head when I read your post. Yes we're telling a bit of our age.

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[Jonny Kansas]

Hey, I knew what it was without clicking it. Wasn't there a series of them? She eventually discovers the secret, doesn't she?

 

[dgstorm]

She discovered the secret in that commercial. I don't remember it being a series, but that was 30 years ago!

 

[Jonny Kansas]

OK. Didn't watch it done I knew what it was. I thought there were one or two before she found the secret.

 

[cr6]

Yeah, I was wondering what you were talking about. LOL

S5 tap'n

 

[Jonny Kansas]

 

[Mustang02]

Leave it to someone in Ohio to walk a dog with a car.

 

[PereDroid]

Geez, you guys are old. I had no idea you were...err uhhh... around my age.

I was going to give Mustang a hard time about his Ohio crack but then noticed he's from here, so it's all good.