At first, Alexa worked great. You ask her to play a song, she’ll play it. You ask her for the weather, to put on a timer or for the time and she would tell you. Now I ask her to play a song and she either doesn’t know it or she connects to my father in laws tv( which I didn’t connect her to) and shows search results on the internet. This irritates both of us because he’s usually watching something and I can’t listen to music. It’s gotten really frustrating lately with her not knowing anything or any songs or playlists. This morning I asked her “Alexa play a day to remember “ pretty simple request right? Apparently not, she said “here’s what I found” like I asked her to look up something she couldn’t just play. SMH it’s no wonder this device is ALWAYS on sale, it’s garbage, your phone can do the same if not more than this nuisance. Just a terrible device overall.

I got 2 Dots free with a promotion and was eager to try them out since I have ALWAYS used the Google Assistant. I wanted to see how they measure up. For me, even though Alexa was the breakout technology, I think Google Assistant has the upper hand here. It would wake for no reason, give totally off the wall responses to questions I didn't ask, and didn t integrate with several smart devices in my house. I know that Google Assistant is guilty of all the same issues, but I think to a lesser extent. I guess this is more a review of Alexa than of the Dot, but it's really just a speaker and it's fine in that regard.

These are some of the most unreliable electronic devices that I've ever owned... I've had nothing but problems with them since the beginning. They are difficult to setup and even more difficult to use from setting simple alarms, to damn near impossible to setup a routine to automatically turn lights on and off. Alexa constantly goes on about, "I'm having problems understanding" and takes more than an hour until you can use it again. They are constantly having connection issues when we a strong internet signal through out the house. I purchased 5 of them and have problems with every single one of them. I thought by resetting them and starting over would eliminate the problems but now... they won't even reconnect to anything. So in the trash they all go. I'd buy ANYTHING else other than Alexa if you want your stuff to actually work.

What an amazing waste of $40! This useless piece of garbage functions correctly, but has absolutely no use to me. It sits in the kitchen and randomly says things when it mistakenly thinks I'm talking to it. That's about it. I can tell it to make reminders, or I could have saved $40 and bought a piece of paper, wrote down a reminder, and taped it to my refrigerator door. I guess people think they need junk like this these days because even the act of turning on light switches or setting microwaves seems like an intimidating amount of work. What a sad world we live in, and this device absolutely typifies that. Completely useless.

Received this in the mail, setup was easy, worked great for 28 days. On the 29th day I unplugged it to bring it into another room (which I had done multiple times before) plugged it in, it was like eveey setting had been erased. Factory reset it 10 times, it would say it's connected, then would try to speak to it, it isn't connected. Looked up every troubleshooting direction I could find, nothing worked. It would not reconnect, and since it wont, it cannot be used. The sound quality was great while it lasted. Grateful it stopped working with 2 days to spare, I will be returning this and getting a regular Bluetooth speaker that isn't so high tech.

August 2021 Update: The aux input option is no longer available or functioning. Original: This is a great generation SPEAKER and is easy to connect to from my phone or with an AUX cable (guests). This is not a great smart assistant as it doesn’t recognize my voice, it can’t hear me most of the time, doesn’t respond, and it doesn’t have answers to most of my inquiries. It’s good when I’m >3 feet away from it. Because of this I only use it as a voice input for home automation or as a speaker in the kitchen when I’m cooking. Yes, I’ve followed the voice recognition setup and I’ve tried resetting it as well as cleared past voice inputs. It’s just not great at recognizing my voice. Others have absolutely no problem with it though. I gave up on this and started using a different brand’s voice input device and speaker along side this.

I like having alexa to control stuff, as I'm disabled and sometimes just getting up to walk is impossible. However, this particular model just doesn't last. ALL 3 of them that I have bought have stopped working in less than 6 months after I bought them. Of course, they do last long enough to be outside return window and warrantee, such as it is. Circling yellow light means death; nothing will bring it back, not even a full reset. I don't know if I should buy a more expensive Echo product or go with another brand all together. I don't have money to waste like this,

Echo Dot is in her box where she belongs !! I’d asked her to play music. she would maybe … then just one song . It was a continuous issue. Id be in the middle of making meatballs she would just stop playing music . I just set my iPhone on my playlist it plays until I stop it. When it did play the sound wasn’t clear it was kinda staticky. I may try again in the future I really didn’t care for it. I thought if it could not handle playing music ………. forget trying anything else with it . I don’t need the aggravation. Voice recognition doesn’t work. Scary little Echo Dot it’s unplugged

I bought two for my 87 year old mother for each part of the house. She has trouble with lamps, the remote, won’t use a life alert. I thought this to be a perfect solution. My mistake. I’m very technically savvy but this was a nightmare. Sitting next to it, Alexa can’t hear her. Spent almost 2 hours on the phone with support because it would not pick up the fire tv, they were useless. The only thing this is good for is turning the lamps off and on, I could have gone with another cheaper option just to do that. Waste of money, don’t buy it. Customer support was horrible and they gave no clue about their own products.

I have 2 cochlear implants to let me hear again and I bought this Echo Dot because I thought it would connect to my phone (for calls) and would also help me hear music more clearly. I have tried and tried to complete setup but no matter what I do, whether I use my phone with the Alexa app or my computer, it will not connect to the Internet. It will connect to my computer... but will not connect to my phone. It will connect to the bluetooth on my phone but what use is that without connecting to Internet? I am very frustrated with this thing. And, it's not that I am technologically impaired. I am a retired computer tech so I believe I know how to follow instructions. I have a Firestick connected to my TV and everything works just fine. Why won't the Echo Dot connect? There is no point in me trying to call customer support.. my cochlear implants don't "hear" well with the cell phone.