Robot assistants are now gracing our everyday life. These awesome assistants can tell you stories, answer simple questions and control your smart house. One such ubiquitous assistant is the Echo Dot (2nd generation). Selling at an irresistible price of $50, it is no doubt one of the bestselling Amazon’s Alexa gadget.
Even though facing competition from gadgets such as Google Home Mini and HomePod, it remains one of the go-to assistants for your house. The Echo Dot offers everything a full-size Echo offers at an extremely competitive price. It is the perfect inclusion in your smart home ecosystem.
The good
The mini-size echo dot speaker offers you all the features that full-size echo such as Google Home Mini offers you, at half the price. It also has an aux-out jack for convenient connection with external speakers. Another catch about it is that it integrates Bluetooth connectivity hence giving you another option to connect to third party gadgets. It is also easy to set up.
The bad
The downside of this magnificent Alexa assistant is that the speaker quality is not convenient for music. It produces anemic sound. Sometimes the Alexa app can contain bugs which affect the usability of the speaker. If two Alexa devices are in close proximity, they will try to answer the queries at hand simultaneously.
In-depth look
Design
The Echo Dot looks like a hockey puck. Its top edge is integrated with a ring of LED lights. They serve as the status bar for the speaker. Its action buttons such as the volume button, are strategically placed at an easy to access position. This gadget is also surprisingly lightweight. Weighing about 5.7 ounces which makes easy to carry around. You can get it in various colors on Amazon.
Usage
The Echo Dot requires you to say her name for it to start functioning. The in-built microphones listen to your query, then send the audio snippet to the Amazon servers. They will tell the Dot how to respond which happens in a flash.
You can tell it to do anything. It can stream music from top streaming sites such as Pandora or Spotify. Another catch is that it can wake you up in the morning, set alarm, she can manage your calendar and make calls and send messages. It can act as a source of comedy by telling your family awful jokes.
It keeps on getting smarter every day. New features are added to its database at least every week. Just recently, it learned how to make announcements in the house. For example when dinner or breakfast is ready.
Alexa continues to control gadgets in your smart home. It can control smart lights, fridges, thermostats among other gadgets. Just tell it what to do, it will comply with your request seamlessly. All you need are the right gadgets installed.
Bottom line
The Echo Dot 2nd generation is a smart way to start the journey of making your rooms smart. It can perform a wide range of activities such as update you on traffic, weather, wake you up, set reminders etc. even though the sound quality is poor for music, you can use the aux-out port to connect it to another speaker. it is a perfect gadget for anybody who wants a virtual assistant in his home.
