I’ve been an Amazon Alexa user since the first generation Echo Dot device was released nearly a decade ago.
While not without its occasional oddities and temper tantrums, 95% of the time it just worked and worked reliably. Its greater compatibility with home automation devices meant that it became the standard in our home over HomeKit and Siri and we regularly use to control everything from our lights, TVs, mini split and (perhaps mostly) for timers and reminders.
When Alexa+ was announced, my wife and daughter were more skeptical than me, and after hearing the demo of the new voice (they HATED it) we didn’t enable the preview available to Amazon Prime members.
In fact…despite my desire to be on the cutting edge of technology, we held off on enabling Alexa+ until we were finally forced to switch by Amazon. Personally, I don’t mind the new, youthful, energetic and less robotic sounding voice (my wife and daughter still find it very creepy).
However, instead of a more powerful AI-Powered Alexa, we quickly discovered that now she fails CONSTANTLY on the most basic of tasks…reminders and timers. This is a feature we use DAILY…multiple times of day in fact.
Gone are the days when we would call out to our Echo Show to set a reminder and it would just work and a robotic Alexa voice confirming the reminder and repeating it back
Instead, with the “new and better version of Alexa” often our requests are met with complete silence, leaving us to wonder if our reminder was even set (spoiler it usually isn’t). Sometimes Alexa misses the first few words of our reminder request leaving us with a gibberish reminder.
It’s gotten to the point where we now have to make requests speaking like Max Headroom saying something like…”Alexa set a reminder for 5:30pm to Start Start Start making dinner”.
Taking a closer look at the Echo Show screen during a request, you can see that there is a good 3 to 5 second break after making the “set a reminder request” to when she actually starts listening for the info regarding your request. This means you either complete talking before Alexa actually starts listening and she misses the request completely, or she misses the first few words.
This version of Alexa is definitely NOT ready for primetime, there are still many bugs and optimizations to be worked out.
If I had wanted to be a beta tester, I would have opted in BEFORE I was forced to.
If you check the Amazon reviews of the newer Echo Show devices, many people were returning them b/c they thought they weren’t working as well as their old ones, but it was really just that they were forced to use Alexa+ on these newer devices.
Apple is rumored to be putting out some new home devices later this year that will work with their new Siri backed by Google Gemini AI, however their likely higher prices may limit mass adoption. If Apple can keep prices down, and these devices play nicely with people’s existing light switches, plugs etc, they may have a real opportunity to capture some marketshare.
I really hope Amazon addresses this ASAP and quickly improves the responsiveness of the is new Alexa+, otherwise we may be putting out a job listing for a new home assistant.
