Latest news with #smart speakers
WIRED
a day ago
- WIRED
I Lived With Alexa+ for a Week. Here's How It Went
I tried the new Alexa+ across three Echo Show devices in my house. The experience was pretty solid for early-access software. Courtesy of Julian Cassady Photography, Alive Coverage I've had Alexa, Amazon's cloud-based voice service, in my house for the better part of a decade. I had the original rounded tower in my first post-grad apartment, and now the second-generation Echo Spot (7/10, WIRED Review) has a permanent place in my office as I cycle among different smart speakers while testing for my guide to the Best Smart Speakers. For years, Alexa's been a constant for controlling my many smart lights and allowing me to jam to my playlist of choice. There was always a lot Alexa could do if you had the patience to install the skills, invest in smart-home gear, and perfect the best way to ask Alexa your question. But the newest iteration feels like a smart speaker you can actually have a conversation with. That version of Alexa is Alexa+, announced back in February, and it is currently available for early access. Right now you join a waitlist and wait to get randomly selected, and Amazon doesn't have a set timeline for when everyone will get access. It's free right now for Alexa users, and once it's public and in its final version, Alexa+ will cost $20 a month (or be free for Prime subscribers). While I can do many of the things I tried with Alexa+ with the original Alexa, it's certainly been much easier (and, dare I say, a little fun) to talk to the newest version. It's an improved audio and visual experience, and—at least, to my ears—the new, more natural-sounding voice is a relief after years of Alexa's robotic tones. A Fresh Face Alexa+ feels akin to the AI chatbots of the world, which isn't a huge surprise given that it was built with generative AI. Compared with the previous iteration, this feels much more modern, though not a new take by any means when we've had ChatGPT and its competitors in our lives for years now. Still, it's refreshing to see on a smart speaker, especially since these devices have felt a little left behind in the current AI landscape. Alexa+ is currently available only on Echo Show smart displays, not on non-screen Echo speakers, and it's clear why: You'd miss out entirely on the visual component. As with a chatbot, your conversation will appear on the Echo Show screen with little talk bubbles, like it's a text thread rather than a voice conversation. It'll appear the same way in the Alexa app, where you can type back and forth with Alexa. Onscreen text bubbles aren't the only change. The homepages of both the Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 8 are streamlined with a more minimalist aesthetic, and they have some new art icons, primarily blue single-line art that will also sometimes appear while you speak to Alexa+. So far the menus still look the same, and you'll still have the library of widgets to choose from. My devices retained all the onscreen widgets I'd previously selected. That blue-line design element can be spotted while speaking to Alexa+, similar to the blue bar that would appear on the top of the screen when you spoke to the original Alexa. This blue line often starts out looking similar, but it will move around and even make shapes to correlate with the topic: clouds for a weather question, a calendar for a date question. You'll also be able to skip saying 'Alexa' as a wake word if you see the blue light on, indicating that Alexa+ is listening. Chat Better Living with Alexa+ has made one thing clear, though: She's a much better conversationalist than either her past self or other smart assistants. Part of that is the new, more conversational voice. Alexa+ has eight adult voices available, including the original voice Alexa is known for. I went with the default new feminine voice, though there are four feminine and four masculine voices to choose from. (There are also four animal voices you can use if you have Amazon Kids+.) Alexa+ manages to answer quickly, even when listening to a more complex question and giving a more complex answer. She usually manages to answer all of my questions, too—no more of the 'Hmm, I'm not quite sure how to answer that' that I've heard one time too many from the original Alexa. She used to give me that answer to even seemingly simple questions—outfit suggestions on a cloudy day at the zoo, for example, or where we can book a table for dinner, or if Kesha has tickets on sale for her tour. Alexa+ can accurately tell me calendar details, and it controls my smart home with a much better speed than the Google speakers that have been controlling my house for the past year. I also like that I can access the conversations I've had in the past through the Alexa app. They're grouped by the initial question I asked, making it easy to skim through conversations and see what Alexa's answers were. Alexa+ will also use the camera to recognize you and other members of the house if you set up their profiles as well. My Echo Shows will display 'Good Morning, Nena' when I approach them and suggest things in the For You section on the homepage that it remembers I like to do, such as aerial arts and going to the zoo. Alexa+ has also done a good job ignoring when I casually mention her name in conversation, and while my initial thought was this was due to me not looking at the camera, my further testing found she was pretty good at ignoring her name if it was mid-sentence, even if I looked right at her. Alexa+ is not perfect yet, nor is she complete. I encountered some hiccups—for example, when asked about the closest donut shops, she provided me with shops in the city I live in, even though I was currently in a different city. However, these issues were easily remedied by providing her with more context. Her funniest answer was when I asked for the weather at the zoo, trying to see if she'd know to reference the San Diego Zoo, and instead she gave me the weather for Zaō, Japan. But the next time I asked about the weather in San Diego proper, and then what to wear to the zoo, she correctly deduced which zoo I was talking about. New Digs While I can make all the original asks I usually would with Alexa+, there are plenty of new things to try. There are integrations with OpenTable and Ticketmaster to find dinner reservations and tickets to shows with Alexa+. The OpenTable tool definitely had some favorites; separate requests for dinner and for high-tea reservations searched the same three restaurants in a row, most of which did not have high tea. But when I asked Alexa+ to find high-tea spots on her own (which uses a Yelp-based search instead of OpenTable), she recommended actual high-tea shops to me and was able to make a reservation for the spot of my choosing. It can't book reservations that require a credit card right now, but Amazon is hoping to solve that soon. If I wanted tickets to a concert instead of dinner, those were also easy to find for the Beaches show in San Diego this October. I've also got Alexa+ set to watch for if Kesha adds tour dates in California. I was also able to ask Alexa+ to plan me a road trip from where I live in Southern California to Zion National Park, which is a trip I've taken before. She recommended the easiest route: Head straight to Vegas, visit Valley of Fire State Park, and then reach Zion from there. She was correct; it's actually the exact route I took previously. You can also mention to Alexa+ a couple of ingredients in your fridge or pantry and ask her to make recipe recommendations. I asked her on a day where I had very little going on in my fridge and freezer—fish nuggets and some coleslaw—and asked for recipe ideas. These ingredients were bought with the intention of making fish tacos, and Alexa+ sensed that was the best route to go as well and suggested eight variations of a fish taco recipe, plus a potsticker stir-fry dish that used both ingredients. It's a fun tool to use, and it works pretty quickly. Alexa+ did like to ask if I'd like to look for recipes with similar ingredients each time I did a recipe request, which I always said yes to. Alexa's also always been synonymous with smart-home control. Alexa+ has been speedy with controlling my smart lights, and using it in tandem with a Ring doorbell means you can ask questions about when you got deliveries or when someone was spotted leaving the house. As always, the biggest roadblock for getting the most out of the smart-home features is owning other smart-home gear. Ring doorbell has the biggest range of things you can ask, since there are a lot of interesting things the video feed can spot and show you, like when packages arrived and when someone was seen at your front door. You can see that from the smart home dashboard as well, where it'll track events, packages, and more on the bottom of the overview. Users were also always able to shop through Alexa, and that's still an option on Alexa+. I prefer the visual experience a little better, as it's quick and easy to search for items I want to shop for. However, it didn't feel hugely different if I was already doing something similar on an Alexa device. Just the Beginning This is just an early look at Alexa+, and the service still has some limitations and features to come, so I can't tell you yet if it's worth that $20. In the future, you'll be able to request to start at a certain movie scene through Fire TV, order groceries and Grubhub deliveries, and schedule more than just dinner reservations. But even with the current experience, I was glad to interact with an Alexa that felt like she was made for now. It has come with some other costs, though. You can no longer opt for local processing of your Alexa requests, whether that's with Alexa+ or without it. That cloud-only processing is what makes features like the conversation in the app history possible, but it also raises major privacy concerns. If it's something you're comfortable with, Alexa+ has been a fun upgrade. If it's not, you'll need to rid your house of any Alexa-enabled devices to avoid it.
Phone Arena
22-07-2025
- Phone Arena
Older Google Home devices are acting up – and users are frustrated
Google's smart speakers and hubs have recently begun experiencing some serious bugs, according to users on Reddit, spotted by Android Authority. The issues are present especially in older Nest hubs and speakers that have become less reliable over the years. It is not the first time we're hearing about concerns with these specific report that the devices are having trouble understanding voice commands and following true. A user reports that almost nothing works, and they keep receiving an error message that "something went wrong". The reported issues are all sorts of things. People say the devices are not hearing the commands right or that there are delayed responses. Some people have observed the devices performing the wrong actions or even completely ignoring commands. Simple things like turning the lights on or off, playing music in specific rooms, or running morning routines are reportedly not working as intended on the affected devices anymore. Unfortunately, those seem not to be just a few isolated instances. It appears more to be a pattern. These features have previously worked flawlessly, but are becoming erratic or non-functional. One person has experienced their device not being able to play white noise in their child's room, but instead playing white noise in the room the user is currently in. There's another reported issue: a strange occurrence when the weather forecast gives different results depending on who's asking. There are also malfunctions reported, such as turning off a fan, resulting in turning off the lights. At the moment, the exact cause of the issue is not clear, but it seems these issues affect older Google smart home devices. Some users suspect the worsening functions of the devices to be somewhat related to Google's upcoming Gemini integration. It's also possible that we're talking about planned obsolescence as well. I think that for anyone who's built their daily routines around these devices, this kind of glitchy behavior can be genuinely frustrating. It's especially tough for people who rely on these devices for accessibility or for helping with kids. Hopefully, Google is already on it and we'll see a fix soon. But it does make you wonder: are these older devices just being left behind on purpose, or is it all just growing pains before a big new update like Gemini? Either way, it's something that needs attention, because smart homes are supposed to make life easier, not harder.
