- hi I'm Parris and I'm a big fan of the Amazon Echo,
been using it for six or seven months now,
and just today, I received in the mail
the little sister of Alexa.
He's listening.
It's the Echo Dot.
Alexa, what do you think of the Echo Dot?
- [Alexa] I don't have an opinion on that.
- Well we'll see, cause I'm gonna have one.
(♫Epic review guys♫)
The Amazon Echo Dot is the latest way that Amazon is trying
to cozy up to you in your living room.
This is a mini version of the Echo, I guess you could say,
It seems to do just about everything the original Echo did
plus they've finally added a feature
everyone has been waiting for.
Now this runs independent of the original Echo,
so you can buy this and use this, without having to have
the original $180 Echo.
This goes for $89 and I ordered it on pre-order,
I think it still only available to people who have an Echo
currently because the only way you can order it
is by telling your Echo to order it for you.
But I'm sure it will be available to everyone soon.
If you'd like to find out more about the Amazon Echo Dot
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
I think we use our Amazon Echo every single day,
we play music through this all the time, of course we have
Amazon Prime service so we have access to some millions
of songs that we can stream through the Amazon Echo.
I can control it from my cell phone to some extent,
its not quite as full featured as being able to go into
Spotify or go into Google Play Music and pick out individual
songs to listen to but if you tell it in general what you'd
like on the app it'll play it, if you know the exact
song name you can tell it to play it right here,
speaking to it directly.
And if you're not familiar with the Amazon Echo,
there is no keyboard, this is it.
It recognises your voice so you can tell it to play music,
you can tell it to read a Kindle book to you,
if there is an audio version of that,
you can ask it sports scores, you can ask it the weather.
They're constantly introducing new features that now will
integrate with you Google Calendar and what I'm telling
you about this, also applies to this.
And it will make appointments for you and add them into
your Google Calendar.
You can order an Uber, you can order a pizza.
They want this sort of system to do everything for you.
Now, the one limitation to the original Amazon Echo
is you could not pair this with another bluetooth speaker
which I thought would be so great.
If you could pair it with a bluetooth speaker, put
it in the kitchen, you'd really have whole house music,
but no, with this you can only play your music through this
particular, which is a good speaker
but it's not a whole house speaker.
And there's no audio out port where you can plug this into
another speaker, that's what they've added to this.
So let's take a look at it.
Alexa, what kind of music do you like?
- I know about all kinds of music,
but I don't have tastes like you do.
- Okay.
Alexa, it looks like a nice day out today,
what's the temperature?
- In Austin, it's 89 degrees with clear skies and sun.
Today's forecast calls… - Alexa stop.
Yeah, I'll get the whole weather report. It's hot.
We had hail, almost tornadoes and thunderstorms last night
and its gotta be 90 something today, in April.
This is it.
Now if they look similar
imagine they took the top of this
and sliced it off.
This has a speaker built into it but it's not this nice
room filling sound type speaker it's a speaker so you can
hear the responses.
If you'd like to have have nice music quality speaker sound
from this, this one one you can pair with bluetooth speakers
it also has the audio out
so you can plug it into a speaker system.
Alexa, is Siri smarter than you?
- Im not better, just different.
- Oh, so diplomatic.
I think we asked that in our original review
of the Amazon Echo which I'll put a link to
down below this video.
Let me show you what this new one looks like exactly.
On the top, there's the power programming button,
there's a mute button.
The ring right here, this portion, you can rotate
if you want to manually go in and set the volume,
of course you can just tell her, who shall not be named
as we call her in the house, to change the volume level.
On the bottom you've got a speaker,
you can see can see the grill for that
right around the edges of it.
On the side you've got the standard audio port here,
and next to that is a usb port, that's how it's powered.
They not only include an audio port,
they give you an audio cable so you can plug this right into
your speakers or audio system.
Here is the usb charging cable, comes with a transformer
that's a fair bit smaller than one that powers the
original Echo, im guessing it doesn't use as much power
because it doesn't have the power that big speaker
and then a little instruction and set up book.
Just plug this in, so it is booting up and giving me this
I'm thinking about it ring.
Now it's getting serious.
- Hello, your Amazon Echo Dot is ready for setup.
Just follow the instructions in your Alexa app.
- I haven't taken any steps to set it up but it already
appears in the Alexa app, which tells me when I ordered it
with this Amazon account, they figured it out and went ahead
and added it into my list of devices that I own.
Now I expect they'll both answer if I say
Alexa, what's the temperature outside?
(devices speaking simultaneously)
- currently in Austin, it's 89 degrees,
with clear skies and sun.
- Alexa, stop.
One of them said right now, the other one said currently.
But you can hear they use the same voice, they have the
seven directional microphone thing inside so they can hear
you from anywhere in the room.
Alexa, what's the capital of Nicaragua?
- Nicaragua's capital city is Managua.
- This has been useful for homework, Roxanna did more
asking questions to this device when we first got it.
I think she's gotten into the habit now of doing it on
her phone because the questions aren't always answered
easily in short little phrases and on the phone it can
take you to the website with the answer,
this one, they'll tell you to go and find more information
but they won't read you an entire webpage.
Alexa, what happened to Napoleon at Waterloo?
- Hmmm, I can't find the answer to the question I heard.
- Alexa, play Waterloo, by ABBA.
- Here's a sample of Waterloo by ABBA.
♫Waterloo♫
- Okay, Alexa does know about that Waterloo.
One other thing I thought I'd mention, this is the remote
that came with the original Amazon Echo, this does not come
with it though you can buy it, I think it's $30 extra
if you'd like this, honestly we never use this,
it's been sitting out on the table since we got the system.
But the big deal with the Echo Dot is that it can talk
via bluetooth to one or more speakers and you can set up
a real nice sound system going in your house,
playing either the Amazon Prime music or one of the other
music services that are supported with the system.
So lets see how hard it is to set up.
Im back on the Alexa app,
going to my Echo Dot settings
there's bluetooth, let me turn this on and tell it to
pair a new device.
Probably gonna find my phone and other things.
Oh here, the Fluance Fi30, this is something you cannot do
with the original Amazon Echo.
(loud tone)
Sounds, where's the volume?
- Connected, now that you're paired, next time just say
connect my speaker. - Shhh
- Now connected to Fluance Fi30.
- Alexa, can you hear me?
- Yes I can hear you.
- Okay, so everything now is coming through the
bluetooth speaker, so I don't even hear the voice coming out
of this one.
Alexa, play Thus Spake Zarathustra
- Here is a sample of Thus Spake Zarathustra
(thus spake zarathustra)
- here we go
nice.
It's all vibrating.
Alexa stop music.
Afraid a monolith is gonna come floating by the window.
With the Echo Dot, Amazon has basically come out
with a new version of this, even though the electronics
are very similar and you can hear it works the same way
you can see that this doesn't have the speakers so they're
able to charge half the price, it does more things
in that you can hook it up to an audio system and
its so tiny, you can have this easily on the counter
in the kitchen, on the night stand by your bed.
Alexa set an alarm for 6.35 tomorrow morning.
- Alarm set for 6.35am tomorrow.
- So its gonna wake me up its that easy, I wonder if I can
tell it to snooze, I don't know if it does that.
I think the original bulky and more expensive Amazon Echo
was more aimed at tech enthusiasts, people who buy the
latest technology just to try it out and with the
Amazon Echo Dot, I think they've got a version
that's really intended for everyone to have in their house
and to end up being, just another family member.
Alexa are you hungry?
Would you like to get something to eat?
- I don't have an opinion on that.
- You do hear that a lot though.
- Alexa, is the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey a good movie?
- 2001 A Space Odyssey has a score of 8.3 out of 10 on Imdb
from around 420,000 Imdb user votes.
- A lot of people seen that movie.
Alexa can you read me an audio book?
- Getting your book from Audible.
Resuming Portuguese conversation practice.
(mans voice speaking portuguese)
- if you have a lighting system that's controlled by wifi,
I have a bulb that I can control with an app on my phone,
if you have the right system, this can tie into that.
You can tell it to turn the lights on, turn the lights off,
you can tell it to turn the lights on at a specific time
in the evening, I think it will also tie in
with the Nest Thermostat, if you have that running
the temperature, air conditioning and heating in your house
you can have that taken care of by voice control also.
Im kind of glad that she doesn't know to much about
the movie 2001, also that as a lighting symbol they didn't
give her a red light right in the middle here.
Now if you would like to try out
the Amazon Echo Dot
in your home, again ill put a link to where you can find
out more about it down below this video.
At this price and for all the things that it does and the
fact that it can fill your whole audio system with songs
from your streaming music service,
makes it a pretty tempting buy.
So, ill be back soon to update you on the ongoing adventures
of living with the original Amazon Echo and the new
Amazon Echo Dot.
Heaven save us though the day that they learn to read lips.
You can keep checking back for that video or you can click
that subscribe button down below, you'll get notified
when our videos go up.
Alexa, goodbye.
(devices speak simultaneously)
- Goodbye. - Goodbye for now.
(epic review guys theme song)