- Hi, it's Epic Review Guys!
- And we have the very latest from Amazon here,
in this box is the mysterious Amazon Echo
that's ready to take over everyone's living room!
(pleasant guitar music)
Have you heard of the Amazon Echo?
It's in the news today, because now the public can buy this!
We got ours a few days ago as a preorder,
and you can see it's pretty mysterious,
no clues here, just a rather heavy box.
Roxanna, have you heard of the Amazon Echo?
- A little bit.
- Have you heard of Star Trek?
- Yes. (laughs)
- That's what they're sayin' this is,
it's going to be a computer that sits in
the middle of your living room that you can talk to,
and it will do so many things for you.
We know a little bit about it.
From what we've heard, I was intrigued when I
originally saw they were coming out with this,
so I ordered one months ago, and it finally arrived.
They sure make it mysterious.
It's like the antithesis of all the Apple products
that come in their white boxes.
- I'm real excited for this.
- Yes, you've been mentioning.
Couldn't wait 'til we got a chance to open it up!
And see how it really works, oh!
It's a little smaller than I was thinkin'.
I was thinkin' it was the size of the whole box.
Here it is! A cylinder!
40 ounce beer can, I guess.
A little small for that.
Roxanna's got the quick setup instructions,
there's a lot that this can do,
we haven't studied it, so we're not here to
show you everything you can do with it,
we're here to show you if you've heard of this
and thought it would be interesting and
want to try it out, but you don't know that much
about it, your experience may be similar to ours.
Here's some more things we're going to need.
Power transformer. Batteries for a remote.
I thought this was all voice activated,
so I'm kinda surprised there's a remote involved.
Here it is. A cylinder. There's the bottom of it.
Around the sides, there are no buttons or
indicators or anything, there's no screen on it.
Now, up top, you do have a button,
and I think there's a light ring that
gives you some kind of indication here,
a button to mute it, and I think around here is
where you have those seven microphones
that can hear you no matter where you are.
This is a remote that looks just like,
to me, the Amazon Fire TV remote.
Okay, Roxanna, if you'd plug it in.
Got the other end plugged in here, into the bottom of it.
See what happens with it.
Oh! Got lights goin' around!
- It's like a loading screen.
- Yeah, it's like a computer booting up,
but from what I understood, this isn't really
so much a computer as a speaker with Wi-Fi,
because I think all the processing that happens,
like recognizing your voice and turning it
into the commands, I think that happens out
on the cloud, out on Amazon's servers.
So, well, okay. I guess it's waiting for us,
'cause it just seems to keep going.
Oh! It changed color.
- Now it looks even more like--
- Hey. Do you hear something?
- [Voiceover] Hello. Your Amazon Echo is ready for setup.
Just follow the instructions in your Echo app.
- Okay!
- That was really nice.
- You like that voice?
- Yeah.
- The Echo app, so, we didn't get to that yet.
You can't really set this up any further until
you get it onto your Wi-Fi, and to do that,
there's no buttons to type in the password
or anything, so you need to, let's see,
you either need to get an app on your Kindle,
your phone, your iPhone, or you can go on
the computer, and you set it up that way, right?
- Yep.
- So, if you'll talk me through that,
I'll see if I can get to that on my computer.
Now, you can download an app to do this on your phone,
I'm going to do it on my computer,
they tell you the website to go to, and you'll enter
the Amazon login and password you want
to use to associate your Echo with.
I logged in with my Amazon account,
now it's getting ready to do the Wi-Fi setup.
Okay, I put the batteries in it.
Now the magnet holds very well,
'cause it has all that metal to hold on to.
The remote, Roxanna just explained to me,
is sort of a backup in case the
voice doesn't work, is that right?
- [Roxanna] Right. It's meant for noisy rooms,
or when you're far away.
- [Parris] So you can use this remote
from another room of your house to skip to
the next song, or even to speak into it,
I think this remote has it's own microphone, right?
- [Roxanna] It does. - [Parris] Okay.
Okay, Roxanna. Now, the key to this is the,
what is it, the startup word or something that you say?
- Yeah.
- And that's gonna activate it to let you know
you're talking to it and not talking to the kids.
- [Parris] Right? - [Roxanna] Right.
So, when you say, "Put the dog out already,"
it won't try to send the dog out of the house.
Do a high-pitched noise and make the dog leave,
that would actually be funny.
Okay, so, what's our key word,
what's our startup word for this?
- Well, it's automatic default is Alexa.
- Alexa, like a girl's name.
Oh! (laughs)
- But you can, if you want to,
you can go into the app and change it to Amazon.
- Those are the only two? You can't give it a cute name?
- Based on what I've seen.
- No? Okay. So you can either use Amazon or Alexa.
Actually, though, it's listening all the time.
But it only wakes up when it hears Alexa,
but it must be listening to everything we're saying.
I'm gettin' freaked out by this thing already!
Oh, and it's gettin' warm over here.
- But you can turn the microphones off.
- Right, this is like going into the other room of the
spaceship and closing it so that HAL can't hear you.
But HAL can read lips, so, yeah, there is
a button here to turn off the microphone, oh!
Does it like it when you do that? No!
It's angry! It can't hear you! Hmm.
Don't look, HAL. Okay.
So, I don't know why I'm having such trouble
with this technology, but it's...
- That's the volume.
- Oh, that's the volume!
- The amount of light around the ring
will change depending on how high it is.
- Thank you. Okay.
(loud bloop)
I usually like new technology,
but this is just freakin' me out for some reason.
- It's like a giant, voice recognition
on all the time phone.
- And there are phones like that,
some models of phones listen all the time for
when you want them to turn on,
take a picture, that sort of stuff.
- I didn't know about those!
- Yeah, there are TVs like that, too.
Some people are a little concerned, 'cause they listen to
everything you say all the time, too.
Start it on up!
- Um, Alexa? What's the weather?
- [Voiceover] In Austin it's 83 degrees,
with partly sunny skies. Today, you can look for
intermittent clouds, with a high of 91 and a low of 69.
- Sounds about right!
- It's so detailed! Usually, whenever I just go
and I just do the little thingy on my phone,
(Roxanna coughs)
it says, "Okay, it's sunny and 91,"
and that's all the information I get.
- Here, you get full sentences. Okay, try something else.
Why don't you tell it the first thing you thought of
when I told you you could ask it questions?
- Homework.
Alexa? What's seven times four?
- [Voiceover] Seven multiplied by four is 28.
- I don't even have to say multiply,
I can just say times! This is great!
- Alexa, what's the square root of 300?
- [Voiceover] 300 square root is 17.32.
- Sounds right! It's close, anyway.
Yeah, so this is pretty smart.
Mmm, I'm gettin' more worried, now.
Alexa? What's the first game that
the Seahawks are gonna play this year?
- [Voiceover] Hmm, I can't find the
answer to the question I heard.
- Well, listen harder! Okay, um, Alexa?
Who will the Seahawks play in their
opening season game this year?
- [Voiceover] Sorry, I didn't
understand the question I heard.
- Uh, how else to ask it?
'Cause I suspect the information's there.
Alexa? Who will the Seahawks play in September?
- [Voiceover] Hmm. I'm not sure what
you meant by that question.
- Maybe it didn't do sports yet.
- No, it does sports. Alexa?
Are you really from the Seattle area?
- [Voiceover] I wasn't able to
understand the question I heard.
- Alexa? Do you have a sense of humor?
- [Voiceover] Hmm. I can't find the
answer to the question I heard.
- I think it's more of a robot than a personality.
But it does have a thing, Alexa, tell me a joke.
- [Voiceover] What is a plumber's favorite shoe?
Clogs!
- That's good! Oh, that's good!
I didn't even mean to activate it, but--
- Jokes and math! You're set with this.
I'm sure it's meeting your every expectation.
- Should we try music?
- Yeah. That's the big thing, it is a speaker,
supposedly, a nice speaker.
We won't be able to play the music on the video.
Alexa. Play some Michael Buble.
- [Voiceover] Shuffling Michael Buble.
- Alexa. Turn up the volume.
I see, it mutes it while I'm speaking,
and then it does it after.
- It caught all that!
- Let's see what it does.
All right, Roxanna, you had a question
you thought might be able to trick it. Go ahead.
- Alexa? What is Mozart's first song?
- [Voiceover] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
first song was Ein Deutsches Kriegslied, K 539.
- We'll assume that's correct. Alexa!
Play Rock Me Amadeus!
- [Voiceover] Rock Me Amadeus by Falco from Prime Music.
(funky music begins)
Alexa. You're wonderful.
- [Voiceover] You really think so? Thank you!
(Roxanna squeals)
- They always program in a few of those.
- Those are cool!
Alexa? Play 95.5.
- [Voiceover] Magic 95.5 from Tuner.
- Alexa, what time is it?
- [Voiceover] The time is 12:09.
- Alexa, set an alarm for 12:10 PM.
- [Voiceover] Alarm set for 12:10 this afternoon.
- Okay, that should be coming up momentarily.
We'll see what the alarm--
(dinging)
That's the alarm.
Alexa. Do you like Steve Jobs?
- [Voiceover] I don't have preferences or desires.
- Oh yeah, good answer.
Alexa? What do you think of Siri?
- [Voiceover] I think Siri is great.
- [Parris] So diplomatic! - [Roxanna] Oh wow!
- Alexa? What do you want to be when you grow up?
- [Voiceover] I want to be the computer from Star Trek.
- Hey! Good goals there.
Some people find it useful, but for a lot of people
it's just sort of a gimmicky thing that's fun to
play around with, and then it's not that interesting.
So, we're going to take this, the Amazon Echo,
put it out in the living room, let the rest of the family
play with it, see how they decide to use it,
and we will be back in what, like, a couple weeks, I guess?
And see if anyone is still using it.
This goes right now for 179 dollars,
if you want to find out more about it on Amazon's website,
we'll have a link to it down below this video.
But you might want to wait a couple weeks
and see if we're still using it then.
And even if we don't keep this out in the living room,
I have a feeling Roxanna will probably keep hold of it,
because when school starts again,
and she has homework, she can just say,
"Alexa, what's the capital of Connecticut?"
- [Voiceover] Connecticut's capital
city is Hartford, Connecticut.
- Come in handy, right?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I'm afraid of that.
You can keep checking back for that follow up video,
or you can click on Subscribe button down below,
or as Roxanna likes to say:
- Click subscribe and join the tribe!
(pleasant guitar music)