I can tell you why I chose the Echo. I'm probably significantly older than the mean at HN, and I'm starting to forget stuff. My wife and I find the shopping li

I can tell you why I chose the Echo. I'm probably significantly older than the mean at HN, and I'm starting to forget stuff. My wife and I find the shopping list and reminders very handy compared to using the phone. I also have underutilized smart home devices (wemo, harmony hub, etc) and Echo just got introduced in Canada at a lower price. I read that Echo has slightly better smart home compatibility than Home, so I decided to go with Echo. My friends with the Home seem equally happy with their devices as I am. I use Echo to turn on groups of lights by voice. It's great. My main gripe with the Echo is that the skills are region locked. There are tons of skills that are only English (US) and not available for English (Canada) yet. I'm lucky that the two skills I'm waiting for aren't that important to me. I get that there are privacy concerns, but I ended up opting convenience and functional benefit over them. I kinda see my Echo as "big brother[1] with benefits". [1] big sister might be more accurate, given that we only have the option of a female voice with Echo