Amazon Echo: Smart Living Powered By Your Voice

March 15, 2016

By: Madison Held, Robert Sterner

With a word, it awakes ready to serve.

Amazon's Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud, is shown, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 in New York. The $180 cylindrical device is the latest advance in voice-recognition technology that's enabling machines to record snippets of conversation that are analyzed and stored by companies promising to make their customers' lives better. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) — Amazon’s Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud, is shown, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 in New York. The $180 cylindrical device is the latest advance in voice-recognition technology that’s enabling machines to record snippets of conversation that are analyzed and stored by companies promising to make their customers’ lives better. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

With the Echo, Amazon has stepped up their game. The Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker that is controlled by the user’s voice.

At $180 the Echo is a smart living powerhouse with an affordable price tag.

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Alexa, a cloud based voice service, is the heart of the Echo. Users simply say the wake word, “Alexa,” and the device is ready to take any number of commands.

Originally the Echo was only available to Amazon Prime members, but it hit the wider market last June.

This updated device includes over one hundred added skills and features. According to Amazon, newest model of Echo will ship on March 23, 2016, but it is currently available for preorder.

Controlling Echo is easy. Call “Alexa,” and she’ll answer even from across the room because of her far voice recognition. The more the user speaks to Alexa, the more it will adapt to speech patterns and vocabulary. Echo will even hear users over surrounding sounds or music thanks to seven microphones.

Alexa can answer questions, read audiobooks and the news, report traffic and weather, give information on local businesses, and provide sports scores and schedules.

A key feature is the ability to stream music from an Amazon Prime account, Spotify, Pandora, iheartradio, and other streaming services. Amazon boasts about the Echo’s 360 degree omni-directional audio which they claim is “room filling sound.”

Amazon has added even more capabilities in this update. Echo can control lights and thermostats. Some of those compatible with Echo are: Wemo, Philips Hue, Samsung, SmartThings, Wink, INsteon, and Ecobee smart home devices. Additionally users can also now order pizza from Domino’s, request a ride from Uber, and open garage doors with the Garageio smart garage opener app.

As the Echo is connected to the web, users can discover more skills and enable the those they want to use via the Alexa web app.

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