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...Then the Echo would only respond about every third or fourth time I marched up to it and shouted at it (in a quiet house with no background noise). Then it quit responding at all...
that's a good deal.
Yesterday at Best Buy they were selling it for $179.00. I looked online, and that seems to be the price it is selling for.
Could someone tell me what is the difference between Echo and Sonos?
and be gentle - I am pretty low-tech.
thanks.
I will repeat the post I just made at another forum asking about Echo, before I saw this thread:
My situation:
no regular old-fashioned radio reception in my bldg.
Desktop is in living room; kitchen is where I want to hear.
I have wifi - the whole building was rigged for wifi by optimum.
I can of course livestream on my computer (when I get a new one anyway) bazillions of radio stations.
But if I make it loud enough to hear in the kitchen while i'm washing dishes etc, it may disturb neighbors.
so I went to best buy to look for wireless speakers.
the blue tooth ones they said only work within 3 feet of the source.
Then he showed me Echo.
Hands-free I can command it to get radio, music, etc.
(particularly cool bec. my hands will be busy in the kitchen)
It is not bluetooth so is not limited to 3 feet range.
Is there any downside to Echo that I should know about?
Cuz I tell you - I am in love.
thanks.
The $99 pricing was the invitation-only intro offer to Amazon Prime customers who already owned some other Amazon tech (I have about 5 Kindles and a Fire)
Sonos is a music system that consists of individual speakers which all connect wirelessly to a central hub. My hub had to be directly hard connected to my router, I am not sure how/if it works on an all-wifi system. You can select what music you want to play from a variety of sources and devices but not voice command. I have 3 Sonos speakers in various rooms (a Play 1, Play3 and Play5) and via my computer or phone I can send different music to all three speakers. I probably would not buy a Sonos system again, given the cost. The Play5 is a far better speaker than the Echo speaker, the Play3 is somewhat better and the Play1 is about par.
Echo (Alexa) is in my open kitchen/living room and while it is voice command, we occasionally have some disagreements over what it is I want to hear. Anything with different or odd spellings or pronunciations she has trouble with. There is a Bay-area musician named Marla Fibish (pronounced FIE-bish) but Alexa does not understand "Marla FIE-bish" or "Marla "FIB-bish" or "Marla "fib-ISH". She does understand "Play the album Morning Star" or "Play the album Noctambule" so you sort of have to learn what SHE wants to hear. There are couple of my playlists she has trouble with, which I probably should go back and rename to avoid the problems.
The biggest downsides, I would say, are: speaker quality if you are a hi-fi fan, system cost and the fact that if you have a power hit during the night Alexa gets cranky about it, announces she is not connected to the internet and you should fix that and then when the power goes back on, tells you all is well. It should have a "quiet night" mode.
I've never had problems with the system hearing me - the other morning I was in bed, 3 rooms away, and shouted "Alexa, what is the weather?" and she heard and replied.
The $99 pricing was the invitation-only intro offer to Amazon Prime customers who already owned some other Amazon tech (I have about 5 Kindles and a Fire)
Sonos is a music system that consists of individual speakers which all connect wirelessly to a central hub. My hub had to be directly hard connected to my router, I am not sure how/if it works on an all-wifi system. You can select what music you want to play from a variety of sources and devices but not voice command. I have 3 Sonos speakers in various rooms (a Play 1, Play3 and Play5) and via my computer or phone I can send different music to all three speakers. I probably would not buy a Sonos system again, given the cost. The Play5 is a far better speaker than the Echo speaker, the Play3 is somewhat better and the Play1 is about par.
Echo (Alexa) is in my open kitchen/living room and while it is voice command, we occasionally have some disagreements over what it is I want to hear. Anything with different or odd spellings or pronunciations she has trouble with. There is a Bay-area musician named Marla Fibish (pronounced FIE-bish) but Alexa does not understand "Marla FIE-bish" or "Marla "FIB-bish" or "Marla "fib-ISH". She does understand "Play the album Morning Star" or "Play the album Noctambule" so you sort of have to learn what SHE wants to hear. There are couple of my playlists she has trouble with, which I probably should go back and rename to avoid the problems.
The biggest downsides, I would say, are: speaker quality if you are a hi-fi fan, system cost and the fact that if you have a power hit during the night Alexa gets cranky about it, announces she is not connected to the internet and you should fix that and then when the power goes back on, tells you all is well. It should have a "quiet night" mode.
I've never had problems with the system hearing me - the other morning I was in bed, 3 rooms away, and shouted "Alexa, what is the weather?" and she heard and replied.
thanks for your comments.
that's funny about the pronounciation mistakes. Guess they are not perfect.
I wondered about the speaker quality - but mostly I will be listening to news and talk.
I wonder how Alexa will respond when I talk back to the news, or curse.
One down side I've found with the echo is the inadvertent Pavlovian training I've gotten: When I want to mute the TV (phone rang? someone at the door?), I find myself saying "Alexa, stop". Then I realize my tv is not my echo. lol
I too got it for $99, but only because I was the first in my group to hear about it, and so without prime, I asked a friend who had a prime subscription to buy it for me and I'd pay them back. Took 5 months because they were so back ordered, but it finally came. The person who bought it for me later grumbled because they finally decided they wanted one and it was no longer on sale for $99.
Do have some fun with the easter eggs (google echo easter eggs and you'll see). I had fun with that at first, but it's old now.
One down side I've found with the echo is the inadvertent Pavlovian training I've gotten: When I want to mute the TV (phone rang? someone at the door?), I find myself saying "Alexa, stop". Then I realize my tv is not my echo. lol
I got one of the new Fire sticks for my TV that uses the same technology and I can talk to it while I watch Amazon or Netflix. Supposedly there is a new Logitech all-in-one remote that uses the Echo and will control the TV, cable box, DVR, sound bar, etc but I haven't tried it yet. My experiences with all-in-one remotes have shown me that the aren't quite there yet and are currently more trouble than just using the right remote.
Besides, I am about the ditch the cable box entirely and use the TV for movies only, since I don't actually watch much, so that would take me down to 2 remotes.
I ditched cable years ago. Bought an antenna for the cost of one month's cable bill and I'm fine with not have 350 channels and still not much I want to watch for over $1000 a year. Now I have 35 channels (after "hiding" religious, shopping, non-English speaking, etc) and not much I want to watch for free.
I ditched cable years ago. Bought an antenna for the cost of one month's cable bill and I'm fine with not have 350 channels and still not much I want to watch for over $1000 a year. Now I have 35 channels (after "hiding" religious, shopping, non-English speaking, etc) and not much I want to watch for free.
I have zero use for over-the-air channels, though, which is why I held on to cable for so long - the only things I watched were on cable-only channels, but I think I can get most of that elsewhere now.
I have zero use for over-the-air channels, though, which is why I held on to cable for so long - the only things I watched were on cable-only channels, but I think I can get most of that elsewhere now.
Try Sling on Roku (And other units) give alot of cable channels streaming for $20/month.
Honestly I don't see the attraction at all. That's why there is (still, so far) radio, and if you can't get radio reception for some reason - there are portable CD/DVD players that are a LOT cheaper.
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. Robyn
