Edit: after struggling with the 1st gen buds and trying to chat and talk with support about them I had given up, but I guess the Amazon wanted to be nice and hook me in for more. I was able to exchange them for the new model. The new ones are working great.Original review below..fully charged phone. fully charged case and buds. playing a podcast and it will just decide to disconnect... tried factory reset and all the steps. coincidentally it started doing this around when the new version released...

This product is a waste of money. It starts to flash red and will not work anymore.

The media could not be loaded. Excellent ear buds to listen to music and shows alexa is awesome to play with

Everything was fine

I loved the 1st gen buds over the 2nd gen, however within a year, the case stopped charging the buds as well as before. Now the case doesn't charge at all.

I have never written a review for a product before, but after what has happened with these Echo Buds I couldn't resist. I usually only wear them when I'm out in the yard...mowing the lawn, shoveling snow...you know, depending on the time of year. I mowed the lawn a couple days ago and took the buds out and put them in the pocket of my shorts.....and forgot that I did. You can probably see where this is going. I put the shorts in the wash and it went through the full washer and dryer cycles. I opened the dryer to find one of the buds sitting there, and I just thought, well....that's the end of those. I put them in the charging case and it looked like nothing was happening, I thought for sure they were dead, so I just sat the case down and went on to other things. A few hours later I picked it up and was going to throw it away...but on a whim I put the buds in and asked Alexa to play something.....and to my absolute amazement they still worked. I tested it for about 20 minutes changing songs, volume, noise cancelling....everything I normally do, and it all worked fine. So all things said and done I am simply amazed by this product (even though they are a gen 1 device and people have moved on). And frankly I can't give the product anything but a 5 star review now.