petitefrancaise

Decision made and whilst investigating which one, actually learned quite a bit about how much these things do!
Bought echo dots because it seems that they do everything a normal echo can do but with crappy speakers - however, they can be connected to speakers using audio jack. And then bought an echo plus for me! I quite like the idea of having lights/nest/door ringer etc all being controlled and plus has the hub for all of them. Halfway decent speaker too and came with a free phillips hue bulb.
And I can't wait until I summon the kids with it! or wake them up to my music!

Rete

I never even looked at any of these new electronic 'toys' before and of course, never knew what they did, didn't do, other than answer questions. So thanks muchly for bringing me into the 21st century.

We do not have a smart home, smart phone, smart car, or are smart people so Alexa, google, echo, etc. will never be part of our lives. I can see the advantages and the uniqueness of the gadgets but no, I don't mind using a remote channel. The house is only 1900 sq. ft. and easy enough to walk into another room to find my husband and we can turn the lights on and off quickly as well as the alarm system. But, hey, now I won't look blankly when someone is talking about the newest electronic gadgets to make life easier for people.

petitefrancaise

Actually Rete, I was talking to a couple in BBBeyond and they were buying a google home for their elderly parent - lives alone in a smallish house. Their mum (mom??) has arthritis and finds it difficult to get up/down and her being able to ask google to call someone if she is in trouble or worried was one of the reasons for getting it.

Rete

We have a few more years before we are classified as elderly and we don't have medical issues, so safe to yell down the hallway.

mrken30

Amazon echo is better for that monitoring old people. You can just "drop in" and start a conversation.

Google home does seem to work well with google voice for making out going calls.

Found out that google home works well with recipes. She/he goes through the recipe step by step as you add ingredients etc.

Chins

Short answer is yes. I bought one and have been using it here in the uk. You can select an English assistant.

Anian

I was given an Amazon Echo for xmas. Had no idea what I would do with it. Biggest issue is that it responds fine to American accents but not so well to my British accent. Played a song quiz game on it and it routinely ignored half of my answers. I've set it up to connect to my plex server, but it's very hit and miss whether it will play the requested songs/albums. Sometimes it plays really strange stuff with vaguely related words. Suspiciously it never has trouble finding samples of music on the pay-for service that I don't subscribe to. Pandora works fine on it though, plus it will play most local radio stations. Sound quality is okay, surprisingly good bass.

We were also given a smartbulb to go with it. We can turn it on and off, and dim it, but currently don't have any real use for it yet. Might be good in the bedroom so we can turn it off without leaving the bed to hit the lightswitch, but we'd need an extender for that to work since we keep the main device in the living room. Not sure it is worth it.

Would really like a physical mute button to instantly shut it up since the kids like to start playing games on it while we are trying to watch the news. It's not simple to set up (Amazon kept logging me out for some reason and the logout time was only slightly longer than the time it takes to establish itself on the network properly) and you are only given a handful of commands to try out. There should at least be a long list of commands that they show you on the site as you set it up, rather than the odd one scattered in various parts of the site.

I would never have bought one, but it's nice to have.

petitefrancaise

I love it!!

Johnny Cash on shuffle to wind the kids up??

Today I started using the food tracker app - what a godsend! I just yell out "Alexa tell the food tracker to add...." no hiding from the bits you nibble without thinking about it. No having to go to the PC or get your phone out to add food. Brilliant.