We're taking our first proper foray into the voice-activated side of home automation with the new Amazon Echo Dot 2nd Generation. This is the first Dot you can order independently from the Amazon Echo - previously, you could only order a Dot via the original Echo device. This one also only cost me $50, instead of the $179 for the full Echo (I tried to get one of these on Amazon's big black friday sale thing - but their website crashed. Poor me.).
It's going to take a few weeks to really get a feel for it, but here's a couple of immediate reactions to the device after receiving and unboxing it yesterday.
It's tiny!
This thing is literally palm size and about as thick as a stack of coasters. Given the quality of the sound that comes out of it and how well Alexa picks up my voice - I'm really impressed with the hardware.
It's confusing to set up.
The Alexa app already knew that I'd bought the device and gave no prompts on it as to where to go to get the wifi set up. We had at least 2 minutes of Alexa loudly complaining that it didn't have an internet connection. Software usability definitely feels like the weaker side.
Alexa is not totally comfortable with my British accent.
I'll be back with more on Alexa after she's settled in a bit.