Alexa, open Chris' garage door.
Alexa: Ok
(Horror sound effect)
What's up guys it's Chris Majestic here with Majestechs.
Today I'm going to be reviewing the Echo Dot 2nd Generation.
So the Amazon Echo is basically a smart voice-controlled Bluetooth speaker.
You would basically set this speaker up in your kitchen or wherever you want in your
house and you can play music, you can do home automation, you can ask it questions and all
kinds of cool stuff.
The 2nd generation Echo Dot is going to have a gloss finish unlike the old Echo Dot and
the original Echo.
So as far as design goes, this is going to be a pretty basic design.
The top of it has 4 buttons.
You have volume up, volume down, a mute button, and an action button.
And on the back you're going to have a micro-USB port, which is going to power it and also
an auxiliary port.
So the auxiliary port is going to give you the flexibility to connect this to your home stereo.
Honestly, besides the way it looks, I really can't tell the difference between the new
Echo Dot and the old one.
So the Echo Dot is going to come in black or white and it doesn't require you to have
an existing Amazon Echo.
Setting this thing up is really easy.
You're just going to go in the App Store or on the Google Play Store, download the Alexa
app, and walk through the setup process.
So this thing is only going to cost $50 so the previous version of the Echo Dot was $90
or $89.99.
This is substantially cheaper considering that the Echo right now costs $180.
So for a size comparison I actually have the original Echo so there you go.
That's a nice size comparison of both of these together.
So basically if you think about it, it's basically just the top of this, but it looks a little bit different.
So the Amazon Echo and the Echo Dot do a lot of different things.
Some of the things that people mostly use it for is to play music, do home automation,
set alarms, ask random questions, and all kinds of crazy stuff.
So the idea is to put the Echo Dot around different places in your house.
So all of these are going to have what they call "Far Field Voice Recognition", which
means you can be in another room, yell out "Alexa" and it will hear you.
What I want to do is a test, considering that you may already have an Echo or you might
already have another Dot.
I want to test what will happen when you have more than one.
So according to Amazon only one of them should answer so we'll see how well that works.
Chris: Alexa, what time is it?"
Echo Dot: "The time is 12:49am"
That's impressive.
There you go.
So even though they both heard me, which you can see from the lights, only the Dot picked
up so I don't know if maybe the microphone in the Dot is better or if it just says hey
I'm newer so I'll answer the question.
Alright, so it wouldn't be any fun if I didn't try to put these things up against each other.
So obviously the Echo Dot is going to have a disadvantage considering it's so much smaller
but we're going to put these things together and see just how much better the Echo sounds
compared to the Echo Dot.
Chris: "Echo, how's the weather tomorrow?"
Echo Dot: "Here's the forecast for tomorrow in Nottingham.
Look for showers, with a high of 74 and a low of 48."
Chris: "Alexa, how's the weather tomorrow?"
Echo: "Tomorrow in White Marsh, there will be showers.
With a high of 74 and a low of 48.
Chris: "So when it comes down to music, I mean, there's not really going to be much
of a comparison.
It really isn't fair, but I just want to let you hear the difference between the original
Echo and the new Echo Dot.
So let's here the Dot first.
Echo Dot: ♪♪♪♪
Chris: This is going to be full volume.
Echo Dot: ♪♪♪♪
Echo Dot: ♪♪♪♪ Yeah....So like I said, that's not going to
be really that fair.
Echo: ♪♪♪♪
Chris: Yeah, not even close.
So just like the Echo, the Echo Dot is going to connect with other smart devices.
So I have my Amazon Echo linked with my SmartThings hub which is a home automation hub so I can
control things like my lights, switches, and dimmers and all kinds of stuff.
So not only can you do that, but like I said, you can play music.
You can ask it random questions, all kinds of cool stuff.
Chris: Echo play some music.
Alexa: (Through external speakers): Here's a station you might like.
Miguel.
♪♪♪♪ Miguel - Sure Thing ♪♪♪♪
Chris: Echo, turn on Basement TV.
Alexa: Ok
Chris: Alexa, turn on outside garage lights.
Alexa: Ok
Chris: Alexa, turn the house alarm on stay.
Alexa: Ok
Alarm Panel: "Armed Stay"
Chris: Alexa, set the downstairs temperature to 74 degrees.
Alexa: Setting downstairs AC to 74.
As far as things I don't like, there's not really much I don't like about it.
The only real thing I can say negative is that the speaker is not great, especially
for music but overall I think it's great.
I have not had a single problem with it and it works really well.
Alright guys that's it for this video.
If you like it, go ahead and mash that "Like" button for me and I want to hear you thoughts
so go ahead and post in the comments section.
I'll respond to your comments.
Thanks for watching!