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Meh. I've owned an Alexa for a few years and I've been pretty underwhelmed. Most of its functionality was pretty useless once the novelty factor wore off. I do

Meh. I've owned an Alexa for a few years and I've been pretty underwhelmed. Most of its functionality was pretty useless once the novelty factor wore off. I don't have a smarthome or anything crazy like that, so the extent of useful functionality remaining is setting timers by speaking while i'm cooking, and asking about weather when I'm in a rush in the morning. Even that it performs poorly. Sometimes it just starts talking when I didn't address it, which is annoying. Often it cant hear me from the next room over, which is annoying. It has difficulty understanding accents which is annoying. I've certainly never found it would be more convenient to use for making amazon purchases as opposed to using my computer or phone, and I don't subscribe to any music service, which alexa bugs me about every time I tried using it for playing music, so I just don't do that anymore. Even the most simple novelty commands ("alexa bark") have managed to find ads attached to them in recent months (really. She advertises some advanced bark skill to me). If Alexa started summoning me it would be unplugged that day.

castlecrasher2 7y ago
Agreed. We have three Alexa devices, our thermostat, the fridge magnet one, and a regular one. All are turned off or muted in the case of the thermostat. At best we don't find it useful and at worst it's annoying.
AgloeDreams 7y ago
I do have a bunch of smart home gadgets (most rooms in the house have Philips hue, some smart plugs for things like a christmas tree, a smart Air Conditioner, plus the xbox control skill) I also have 2 Echos and 2 Google home (nest home?!) products. In my experience Alexa sucks at voice recognition in creatively bad ways. Most importantly, if I want to turn on lights for a room, it has taken to making a very subtle variant of the room I asked for and then goes into a lengthy 'I could not find the room 'living rooms' what device did you mean?' (or my personal favorite, turning off the Xbox instead which turns off the tv, while you sit there dumbfounded staring at the off TV now[It sometimes turns our tv on if I turn on the bedroom lights too!]) But she says it rather slow and it's really annoying as you wait the extra 10 seconds. In most cases it would be faster to get up and actually use the light switch. To think this is actually much better than it used to be, back at 1.0 it was very bad, finding things very far off or responding to 'turn on living room' with 'According to webster's, a living room is a room where..' Obviously the only response as a human is: 'I KNOW WHAT A LIVING ROOM IS, I'M IN A DARK ONE, I WANT IT TO BE BRIGHTER.' The Google(NEST?!) home works great and is generally right, but saying 'okay google' is pretty dumb. (also creepy)
- Moru 7y ago
  I prefer muscle memory before voice battle any day of the week.
cortesoft 7y ago
I find the Alexa pretty useful having small children. Being able to change the thermostat, turn on and off lights, start white noise for the baby, play music for the kids, all without having to have my hands free is nice. I set up a nap routine for my baby's room where it turns off the lights and starts the white noise.
StavrosK 7y ago
My Alexa performs really poorly. I converted my house into a smart home (with devices I made, as I don't trust the average vendor), and she's handy for turning devices on and off, but she even gets that wrong sometimes. My wife will be asleep and I'll say "Alexa, lights off" and she'll hear "lights on" and the house goes full brightness. Don't get me started on playing music, she's useless for that. Yesterday I asked her to play a song fifteen times before I got angry and gave up at her inability to understand what I'm saying.

castlecrasher2 7y ago

Agreed. We have three Alexa devices, our thermostat, the fridge magnet one, and a regular one. All are turned off or muted in the case of the thermostat. At best we don't find it useful and at worst it's annoying.

AgloeDreams 7y ago

I do have a bunch of smart home gadgets (most rooms in the house have Philips hue, some smart plugs for things like a christmas tree, a smart Air Conditioner, plus the xbox control skill) I also have 2 Echos and 2 Google home (nest home?!) products. In my experience Alexa sucks at voice recognition in creatively bad ways. Most importantly, if I want to turn on lights for a room, it has taken to making a very subtle variant of the room I asked for and then goes into a lengthy 'I could not find the room 'living rooms' what device did you mean?' (or my personal favorite, turning off the Xbox instead which turns off the tv, while you sit there dumbfounded staring at the off TV now[It sometimes turns our tv on if I turn on the bedroom lights too!]) But she says it rather slow and it's really annoying as you wait the extra 10 seconds. In most cases it would be faster to get up and actually use the light switch. To think this is actually much better than it used to be, back at 1.0 it was very bad, finding things very far off or responding to 'turn on living room' with 'According to webster's, a living room is a room where..' Obviously the only response as a human is: 'I KNOW WHAT A LIVING ROOM IS, I'M IN A DARK ONE, I WANT IT TO BE BRIGHTER.' The Google(NEST?!) home works great and is generally right, but saying 'okay google' is pretty dumb. (also creepy)

Moru 7y ago
I prefer muscle memory before voice battle any day of the week.

cortesoft 7y ago

I find the Alexa pretty useful having small children. Being able to change the thermostat, turn on and off lights, start white noise for the baby, play music for the kids, all without having to have my hands free is nice. I set up a nap routine for my baby's room where it turns off the lights and starts the white noise.

StavrosK 7y ago

My Alexa performs really poorly. I converted my house into a smart home (with devices I made, as I don't trust the average vendor), and she's handy for turning devices on and off, but she even gets that wrong sometimes. My wife will be asleep and I'll say "Alexa, lights off" and she'll hear "lights on" and the house goes full brightness. Don't get me started on playing music, she's useless for that. Yesterday I asked her to play a song fifteen times before I got angry and gave up at her inability to understand what I'm saying.