Amazon Echo and Echo Dot

[Grandad]

I find it a little sad to say that my whole family seem to have their mobile phones permanently in one hand fearful, it would seem, that they might miss some piece of information arriving via social media. And now the latest fad is talking TO their phones and asking questions. They also give instructions like turn on the central heating, set the room temperature to 22 degrees, What is the time in Hong Kong, What's the weather tomorrow, etc etc....
Horus has mentioned that he uses Amazon Echo. I can understand all that Echo, via its trigger word Alexa, can do BUT, what I do not yet understand is the difference between Echo at about £150 and Echo Dot at around £50.
I am really directing this towards Horus who would have considered the pros and cons of both before making his purchase.
Before you ask, yes, I am thinking of buying one of these gadgets or maybe put one on my Christmas list

[Horus]

Basically Grandad don’t bother to wastes you money on the Echo unless you want to have s much better speaker. The Echo Dot does exactly the same as the Echo and plays music at a very acceptable level and all of the Alexa commands that go with the Amazon Echo and Dot are the same on both devices. If you were a bit of a music buff then the extra quality speakers in the Echo are better, but for most peoples hearing it is not a lot different and of course you can simply play the Dot’s output via another Bluetooth device or plug in a 3.5mm lead and link it to other speakers. So basically the only difference is the power and quality of the speaker, everything else is identical. Also you need to remember that regardless of the device you are using (mobile phone/Alexa etc.) you still have to have the corresponding smart switch fitted on the device you are commanding and they are not cheap.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I will admit open and with complete forthrightness Grandad - I have NO IDEA what you're talking about!

[Grandad]

Thank you H, you have confirmed all that I found when reading the description of each device. There did seem to be some emphasis on Echo's music ability but that was about all.
My family are all intelligent beings with good jobs but a bit 'geeky'. All three have some degree of remote control. #1 son is totally Apple Mac in his home so can do a lot of things remotely on his mobile, even hooking into his desktop. Son in law has 'Hive' with a few devices like heating control, and a remote control camera in his lounge (I don't get that one?). #2 son mostly just uses Siri on his iphone. But they all plus their spouses use their phones as computers and do all that I do on my PC on their phone.
Do you remember Dan Dare comics and their hand held 'communicators'? Great vision those sci-fi writers.

Now LLL, you really need to get a life And I am joking with tongue in cheek But most devices now have voice recognition to answer questions or operate devices remotely via Bluetooth. Amazon systems answer to 'Alexa', Apple systems to 'Siri', and even my inexpensive Lenovo computer has 'Cortana' as its assistant. Why bother to get up in the morning, just take your mobile phone to bed and do all your work with that.

[Horus]

And don't forget "Hey Google" Grandad

[Grandad]

Although I have used it occasionally, I did not realise that Cortana is a Microsoft Windows assistant.

[Horus]

These voice assistants have come a long way, maybe the best is the Google one that seems to be more intuitive with its responses and it can continue with a question without having to say the key word all the time. Alexa is not quite so smart, but it is improving all the time and since they have allowed developers to integrate with the Amazon assistant for free, it is likely to finish up with a bigger market share usage wise. The thing to remember about all these applications is that they are all novel to begin with, I mainly use mine to set the timer when I am cooking as I have a head like a sieve, so "Alexa set timer for 45 minutes" is really useful to me if I have something in the oven. Alternatively "Alexa add air freshener to my shopping list" or other items that I think about at the time, but will probably forget when I am doing my shopping is really useful and of course I can just say "Alexa send shopping list to my phone" and it will do so, it also allows me to add or delete things from my list and keeps it and my phone updated with any changes, so I find that really handy. Also the others are on mobile devices whereas Alexa is located in the home.

[LovelyLadyLux]

The future ....... voice servants ...... BUT staying in bed all day has appeal!

I really don't understand how these work. I've heard of Cortana but 'heard of' about sums up my knowledge of it/them.

[Horus]

I use mine around the house all the time and as it is always listening you get used to just speaking to it, you may say “Alexa what's the weather like” and it tells you the weather in your locality. Or maybe “Alexa what’s on at the cinema” and she runs through a list, quite often I will just say “Alexa play my music” and I have background music playing. It will also give you in great detail any fact that is on Wikipedia, so you may ask “Alexa who is George Clooney?” and she will tell you all about him, I can even say things like “Alexa good night” and she usually replies “Sleep tight”. I have even asked her to marry me and she told me she was not the marrying kind.

[Grandad]

Not the marrying kind eh H? You would probably need to be run on batteries and micro circuits for her to be interested in marriage

My mobile is quite ancient, Samsung A3 which meets all my needs, but when I checked even that jhas a voice assistant that works very well. You don't have to use a name, just ask your question.
I guess I am falling into the trap of joining the kids

[Horus]

Your assistant is called S Voice Grandad and you usually have to press the 'Home' button twice to activate it. You can give it any name you like to act as a 'wake up' command, but the default is usually set to be = "Hi, Galaxy"