Hello Alexa!

You walk in exhausted after a long day at work and just need some soothing retro tracks to unwind. Just say, "Alexa, play some Mohammed Rafi songs” and, without having to lift a finger, your smart speaker will leap into action and start playing some golden oldies in your living room. You want to power down for the night, and all you have to say is, “Alexa, good night”, which can set up a 6:30 a.m. alarm and turn off  the bedroom lights. These slices from a Jetsonian future are a reality today, with Amazon’s AI-powered Echo series of smart speakers — all you have to say is the wake word “Alexa”, and the speaker lights up to indicate that the virtual assistant is listening for your next command. Now, whether that’s asking the spelling of a complex word, playing some music, ordering some detergent, calling a cab or relaying the latest news or the match score — Alexa, the voice- enabled assistant, is ready to do your bidding.

No matter which one of  the Echo speakers you buy — there’s the diminutive Echo Dot, the mid-range Echo and the top-of-the-line Echo Plus — you get a bunch of common capabilities. All of them feature seven far-field microphones, which means you can ask Alexa something from way across the room, even if there’s music playing, and still have her respond. All of them can stream music from Amazon Prime Music, Saavn and TuneIn, and they do a pretty decent job at understanding Indian song and artist names. You can set Routines — specific phrases that can be associated with a set of tasks — and have Alexa run through them just by saying the phrase.  

Of course, no surprises, you can also order products on Amazon using your linked Amazon Pay wallet. Where the Echo series shows the most potential is its Skills feature, which allows you to connect the virtual assistant with third-party services to well, expand her skills! Want to hail an Uber? Order a meal via Zomato? Check the status of  your Jet Airways flight? Alexa’s got you covered, and app developers are adding in new skills every week.

Where the three differ is in sound quality. The Echo Dot works fine for Alexa’s responses, but you are not going to enjoy streaming tunes on this speaker — fortunately, there’s a 3.5mm jack and Bluetooth connectivity to hook it up with an external speaker. The mid-sized Echo gets a 2.5-inch woofer paired with a 0.6-inch tweeter, and the taller gets a marginally bigger (0.8-inch) tweeter, and both deliver Dolby-tuned 360-degree omni-directional sound, which sounds robust and full — just don’t expect either to have the same sonic capabilities as dedicated speakers in the same price range. The Echo Plus adds in the ability to serve as a smart home hub for products that run on the Zigbee standard, so you can have it detect your Philips Hue smart lights and Oakter/D-Link smart plugs and control them via voice thereafter.

Amazon certainly took its time bringing the Echo series to India, and the wait was worth it. Sure, some skills aren’t quite primetime yet, but Alexa works well with Indian accents and pronunciation, and several popular apps are adding skills. If you’re looking to dip your feet into building the smart home of the future, Amazon’s Echo family is certainly a strong first step.