Amazon Echo Show
I've long resisted the Amazon Echo products, along with other similar "lady in a can" products from Google. The idea of an always-on microphone creeped me out, and the utility just wasn't there, especially since my only options seemed to be Google, who is driven by advertising, and Amazon, who hasn't really proven itself in the consumer hardware space, yet.
That said, I bought a Fire TV and Fire TV Stick late last year, because I wanted something with 4K support for my newly acquired family-room TV, and also wanted a portable streaming stick option to bring with me on the road to use with my portable projector. Overall, I've been quite impressed with the quality and reliability of the products, and I am starting to believe that Amazon can create decent consumer hardware products.
Amazon recently announced the Amazon Echo Show, which provides all of the functionality of the traditional "lady in a can" Echo, but adds a camera and touch screen to enable a bunch of additional features, including video chat. The device looks homely at first glance, but its appearance, especially that of the white-bordered option, is really starting to grow on me in a sort of retro-futuristic way. It almost looks like something that
Go and watch the cheese promotional video on the site. If it works as well as the video says, I find the addition of the screen and camera to potentially be the tipping point for me. I'm finally starting to understand the appeal of these devices, and can easily see myself buying a few for my house, along with one or two for family to enable quick drop in video chats.
Comments (16)
The dot is kind of nice for the kids, even if I get what you're saying about privacy. They just use it to play music most of the time since they can call out the songs they know the names to. Voice interfaces are kind of nice if you can't spell yet. :)
I have an echo, but the idea of having a hackable cam always watching is a little creepy to me.
As an aside, be prepared for your kids to constantly request the same song over and over from Alexa.
This way you can be monitored with audio AND video!
I have always felt the same way, but like I said, I'm starting to see the utility. I sort of feel like its the inevitable future.
I'm wondering if adding the screen will be a crutch for voice operation. It's only ok right now, as far as I've seen.
watch the cheesy video on their site. In my testing w/ friends' Echos, Alexa is vastly superior to Siri. Accurate!
Yeah. I've never owned one but def thinking about it
if Apple doesn't release one in 2017, I'm almost definitely going to get an Echo Show (or two).
Are they touch screen? I hope not
yup, but all UI can be handled from voice... supposedly.
😞 so it's just a tablet mounted at an angle
😮
Yeah, that's definitely not what "lady in a can" would mean where I am right now.
Yeah, if it were able to do it without listening/watching in (and/or with keeping the data local), I definitely agree.
Dude. I'm had an Amazon echo for 5 months and freaking love it. I find myself asking it for new things weekly and it rarely fails to be helpful. What they have is (a) an incredible amount of voice data to train Alexa and (b ) immense consumer data. Both of those feed some amazing training to the algo.
If you trust the person holding the data, the tech is really useful, but right now your options are basically Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple. Apple might be the most trustworthy of the bunch, but still not perfect. At some point we'll either need to create something more protected or find ways to make it harder to spy while using the popular ones.