Amazon's Alexa+ Arrives in the UK, Free During Early Access

[canadianreader]

I’m amazed people pay for these data harvesters in their home.

People have always paid for their own self-destruction like paying for substances like drugs and alcohol this is no different just another addiction to convenience.

People should be getting paid by Amazon for what they are getting out of folks.

With all the hacks and breaches happening lately it’s almost certain there’ll be an I told you so moment in the future concerning these listening devices and if/when it happens you will be vindicated.

 

[svish]

Expensive for monthly subscription. Definitely not planning on subscribing once it launches in my country.

 

[JulianL]

I find it worse than the old Alexa. The response times are much slower. Sometimes I don't even know if it heard my request the delays are so long.

Amazon can very easily fix that with a software release. As soon as you've finished your voice input they just have it softly say "Hmmmmmmm........." (thinking sound) for 3 or 4 seconds while it's working on the answer so that at least you know that it did hear you.

I'm joking of course but this (speed of response) is one of the two things that I think too many of the providers don't give high enough priority too. The other in my opinion is excellent processing of the wake-word/phrase - reliably recognising it even when spoken fairly softly and potentially in at least somewhat noisy environments such as one with background TV noise while not being so over-sensitive that a device false-triggers all the time. Both of those are the very first barriers that a user has to get past when getting a response from their device so it they create frustration then pretty much however good the final answers are, the user experience is going to be one of frustration.

I actually think that old Alexa did both of my "two things" quite well. It's why I moved from Google Nest to Amazon Echo devices a few years ago - I thought that Google Assistant was noticeably smarter than Alexa but my Echo devices heard me way better than my Nest devices, false-triggered less, and responded more quickly. As an added bonus I also found having to say "Hey Google" or "OK Google" totally cringeworthy where just "Google" as the wake word would have been so much better for me so it was actually a quite significant extra benefit for me to just be able to say "Alexa" to wake up my device.

I'm really hoping that once Apple finally gets its Siri act together that it can deliver what for me would be a pretty much perfect smart speaker. Apple has already demonstrated that it can deliver very good audio quality with its HomePods (given their size constraints) and it has microphones in almost every other one of its electronic devices so I would hope that it knows how to deliver a good mic array. If it can just get Siri to at least as good as Google Assistant and hopefully even better then I'll be going all-HomePod for my smart speakers within months of Apple releasing the updated hardware and software.

 

[Steve Adams]

I’m amazed people pay for these data harvesters in their home.

People should be getting paid by Amazon for what they are getting out of folks.

Yes, because Amazon gets alot from me bitching about my co-workers, and enjoying the wife in bed. ha ha ha.

 

[hagar]

Sounds good - I've been eager to try this since it was announced. Our Alexa devices have been reduced to being used for timers, light switches, TV on/off switches & shopping lists, so it will be interesting to see whether this makes it any kind of conversationalist.

Only downside is that my main speakers are a Sonos One and Sonos Arc Ultra, which don't seem to be compatible. I do have a 4th gen Echo though which I can start to make more use of.

Not sure what sounds good about Besos installing an always-on microphone in your house. For me that’s a hard pass.

 

[AppleMega]

The Bezos spy network is spreading.

 

[kiranmk2]

Out of interest how do you find Alexa on your Sonos One? I have a few Sonos Ones and a Sonos Move. I love them for listening to music but I hate them as smart speakers.

When I got my first Sonos One (actually a stereo pair for my office) I thought great - I can have decent speakers for a better music listening experience and also get rid of the Echo device on my bookshelf since one device (the Sonos One) can do both. I also thought that since Sonos speakers are reasonably premium-priced devices the microphone arrays might also be a nice step up from the ones in my $50 (or whatever) Echo Dot. The reality turned out to be very different and I have found the microphones in my Sonos Ones and Sonos Move to be horrible at least when used with Alexa. I ended up reintroducing Echo devices alongside my Sonos speakers to answer queries, do light control etc. In one room I'm still using a third generation Echo Dot and that hears me way better than my Sonos Ones do (or did - I've disabled the smart assistants on those now).

I'm really hoping that Apple can get its act together with next generation Siri and also releases new HomePods in both mini and full sized because if Apple delivers on the hardware and software front I'd happily sell all my Sonos and Amazon stuff and move everything to Apple Homepods.

An updated HomePod Mini (HPM) has been rumoured for what feels like forever and I'm assuming that it will eventually come out but I am am concerned that we haven't heard anything about an updated full-sized HomePod. I know that was updated more recently than the HPM but if Apple does put a more powerful S-Series chip in an updated HPM, and maybe an N1 chip for more reliable networking, it would be nice to also get those enhancements in the full-sized HomePods as well. Apple's totally unexpected (at least by me) announcement of the updated AirPods Max on Monday does give me at least a bit more hope that if/when the HPM does get updated then just maybe the full-sized model won't be overlooked.

Hard to know as I get the feeling there Alexa backend has been through a lot of changes. At first I couldn't really tell a difference between Alexa responses between the One and the 2nd gen Echo it replaced. I don't use features such as the intercom system so the lack of these on Sonos didn't bother me. I have an open plan living/kitchen area and there is an Echo Dot 5th gen in the kitchen and the One in the living area. There are times when I'm in the kitchen and the One will hear the request and vice versa. There are also times when a timer is going off and we can't get it to stop - but that seems to affect both the Echo and Sonos devices. There are even times when a command is not picked up by either device, but instead picked up by the 4th gen Echo two rooms over. If I had to guess, there is some issue with the various devices deciding quickly which one should process the command and in some cases, none of them do it!

 

[JulianL]

... There are also times when a timer is going off and we can't get it to stop - but that seems to affect both the Echo and Sonos devices....

Thanks for the reply.

As I mentioned, I no longer have Alexa enabled on my Sonos speakers but that timer issues brings back some bad memories from when I did. Maybe I was just lucky in that I never saw the issue on any of my Echo devices but I certainly did when I had Alexa enabled on my Sonos speakers. It was infuriating and slightly disturbing when I just couldn't stop an alarm sounding. I found that the only way to stop the alarm was to power-cycle the Sonos device.