Amazon Echo: A preliminary simple review.

[IronEagle]

After a day or two of using the thing, I'm pretty happy with it. It's smaller than I thought it would be (probably about the smallest size to have reasonably good sound) It's pretty good at recognizing your voice commands and I am not always a person with clear enunciation.

I called up all sorts of radio stations, and music without problems. I am primarily using it to listen to Philadelphia radio and and music (streaming and my Amazon library)while I am doing other things sround my house The hands free aspect/voice control is awesome when it comes to that.

Have to say though it is a bit disconcerting to have your voice commands recorded for future reference. You can turn the microphone off. At lest that is what they say... the LED display turns red when mic is off.

No foreign language support is bad. But I guess that is why it is a beta product. The concept is awesome in some ways... but scary because that mic is on all the time.

IMO, Amazon needs a deal like Apple has with iTunes Match to make this work. If I had my iMatch library on this thing it would be awesome.

[tjl88]

I don't get mine until May. Sounds cools though, I'm excited to see where they take it.

I'm not sure if this is the same as what you called your Amazon library but you can import itunes to Amazon with this. I think it's only a certain amount of songs though.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201379250

Edit: 250 songs free, 250,000 with subscription.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201379280

[Riccardo]

had to Google it as I nhoi

After a day or two of using the thing, I'm pretty happy with it. It's smaller than I thought it would be (probably about the smallest size to have reasonably good sound) It's pretty good at recognizing your voice commands and I am not always a person with clear enunciation.

I called up all sorts of radio stations, and music without problems. I am primarily using it to listen to Philadelphia radio and and music (streaming and my Amazon library)while I am doing other things sround my house The hands free aspect/voice control is awesome when it comes to that.

Have to say though it is a bit disconcerting to have your voice commands recorded for future reference. You can turn the microphone off. At lest that is what they say... the LED display turns red when mic is off.

No foreign language support is bad. But I guess that is why it is a beta product. The concept is awesome in some ways... but scary because that mic is on all the time.

IMO, Amazon needs a deal like Apple has with iTunes Match to make this work. If I had my iMatch library on this thing it would be awesome.

Looks very cool. Interested in your longer-term assessment

[IronEagle]

I don't get mine until May. Sounds cools though, I'm excited to see where they take it.

I'm not sure if this is the same as what you called your Amazon library but you can import itunes to Amazon with this. I think it's only a certain amount of songs though.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201379250

Edit: 250 songs free, 250,000 with subscription.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201379280

That's basically what I would want. Sounds like it is almost like iTunes Match.

I just paired the Echo to my iPhone and it plays music streamed over Bluetooth just fine. You have some limited hands free control too but you cannot select a specific song, artist, or playlist. It just plays what is queued up on the iPhone. But you can control volume, pause, skip songs, etc. with voice commands.