Its been a few years since I originally reviewed
an Amazon Echo and since that review I’ve mainly stuck to using the Google Assistant
and Google speakers as my predominant assistant, but last year I bought the latest Amazon Echo
and Echo Dot, and in general I’ve been so impressed with the progress Amazon has continued
to make in this space, It's made me question whether or not I was originally wrong about
the Amazon assistant and the Echo and Echo Dot and if Amazon's offering is just better
than what you can get from Apple or Google. So let's dive into that and who I now think
the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot are for. Now this latest generation of the Echo and
Echo Dot, look a little different than the previous generation. They’re a bit more round and wider and that
classic LED light ring that alerts you to all sorts of things is now at the bottom,
making it a bit more subtle and a change I overall really like. One thing I’ve always appreciated about
Amazon’s Echo design is they mark the buttons for things like play/pause, volume up and
down, and the mute mic button right at the top of the device. Apple’s HomePod doesn’t even have a mute
mic button, and while Google’s does, the volume and play/pause buttons aren’t marked,
making it slightly less intuitive to use without going through setup in the app that explains
how it works. Also, Amazon Echo and Echo Dot feature a 3.5
mm out jack. It's so interesting to me that Amazon continues
to include this feature on the Echo and the Echo Dot because what it allows you to do
is plug in your Echo to a better sounding speaker. And then make that speaker, now a smart speaker
being powered by one of the Amazon devices. It also makes previous devices that both Amazon
and Google made, which were the Echo Input and the Chromecast Audio. pretty much obsolete when you can just plug
in a smart speaker into a better sounding speaker. The audio on the Echo and Echo Dot has also
improved a bit I’d say, but for the Echo specifically, its bass on just a bit too muddy
to me,and if I’m buying a speaker to listen to music on, I’d rather buy a Sonos speaker,
which overall still sound remarkably better than the mainstream smart speakers from the
tech companies, although they do cost more too. The nice thing about the Sonos speakers I
bought and reviewed on the channel is not only do they sound better, but you can also
put the Amazon assistant on them. So that’s a bit about the updates to the
hardware design, but of course, with smart speakers, hardware is just half the product
experience, The other half is the Assistant that lives on these speakers and that's to
me where i think the Echo and Echo Dot really shine. The area which has mattered the most to me
with the Amazon assistant is its speed. It’s very quick with it’s responses. In my experience its consistently about a
second or two faster than the Google Assistant. Here's what I'm talking about. Me: What's the weather? Assistants: “The current weather is right
now, is fair five degrees and cloudy sky.” Now, while this doesn't seem like a major
difference, when you're using these assistants throughout the day for things like playing
music, setting reminders, timers, asking for the weather or what time it is, all of that
adds up and it does start to become noticeable, especially though, if you use multiple types
of assistance throughout the day, like i do. I use all three assistants every single day
and then when you do that, it really becomes painfully obvious that the Google Assistant
response times are just on average slower. Now, I used to think my Google Assistant devices
in my room were slower because I simply had more Google devices in my room all trying
to figure out which one should respond to my voice query, however, since getting more
Sonos speakers, I now have an equal number of Amazon Assistant powered devices in my
room as Google and the response times remain unchanged, even with my Echo sitting right
next to one of my Sonos Move speakers, the Amazon Assistant remains a second or two faster
than Google with Siri at about the same response time as the Amazon Assistant. Another thing that has vastly improved with
the Amazon assistant, that does give me a bit of a pause when considering which assistant
I'd recommend people should go for is general search queries. So think anything you'd normally type into
the Google search bar. It used to be pretty much only the Google
Assistant could reliably answer most search queries, often giving me satisfying answers
about 9 times out of 10. Now, I found for a lot of search queries,
the Amazon assistant actually gives pretty comparable answers to answers you get from
the Google Assistant, so much so that I'm not quite sure if the Google assistant really
has a significant competitive edge in this area compared to the Amazon assistant anymore. Now obviously yes, the Google assistant is
still the best when it comes to search queries, which you'd expect given that Google makes
it, but Amazon has really closed the gap here and here just a few examples of things i've
recently searched for and the responses you get from both assistants. Me: “How long does basil typically last
as a house plant?” Alexa: Here is an answer from an Alexa answers
contributor that I translated: basil and pods last several months. And if pruned will grow back later.” Me: “How long does basil typically last
as a house plant?? Google Assistant: “On the website growing-basil.org
they say, basil can survive slightly longer if grown indoors around 6 to 8 months. Me: “How many Oscars does John Williams
have?” Alexa: “John Williams has won five Oscars
out of the 52 nominations he has received. His latest Oscar nomination was in 2020 for
best achievement in music, written for motion pictures.” Me: “How many Oscars does john williams
have? Google Assistant: “John Williams has won
five Academy Awards. They include the academy award for best original
music, score for Schindler's List in 1994 in the academy award for best original music,
score for ET, the extra terrestrial in 1983 among others.” Me: “What is the neo, urbanism school of
thought?” Alexa: From citymayors.com, the new urbanism
design movement hails from the US, and is a term attributed to the school of thought,
which emerged in the late 1980s, that sought to harness principles of livability and diversity
in the way. Urban space is designed and managed.” Me: “What is the neo urbanism school of
thought?” Google Assistant: “On the website cnu.org
they say new urbanism is a planning and development approach based on the principles of how cities
and towns have been built for the last, several centuries walkable blocks and streets, housing
and shopping in close proximity and accessible public spaces.” Amazon’s Assistant also has it’s own advantages
compared to other Assistants as well like the ability to read out loud your Kindle books
in sync as you read them on your Kindle or one feature I use all the time is alerts when
items I’ve ordered from Amazon have either been delivered or are on their way. Another area, where the Amazon assistant Echo
and Echo really outshine the competition is with smart home devices. In fact, its so good at setting up and controlling
smart home devices, right now, it’s the only obvious choice to go with When setting
up devices like smart light bulbs, smart switches, or my Roborock robotic vacuum cleaner, the
Amazon Assistant automatically discovered these devices as soon as they joined my WiFi
network and it proactively added them to my home. It does this without me having to go into
the Alexa app, whoops, sry, Amazon Assistant App, to link my account which Google forces
you to do in order to add 3rd party smart devices to the Google Home app. The Amazon App also does a better job than
either Apple’s Home app or the Google Home app at guiding you through what types of things
you can do with your Echo, Echo Dot and Assistant. While the one advantage I give to Google and
Apple is I think having a separate app,like the Google Home app and Apple Home app for
smart home control is much more simple than what Amazon does which crams the smart home
stuff into the Amazon Assistant app with everything else like media and music, and a bunch of
other stuff. Another thing Amazon has done an amazing job
with is the setup experience of the Echo and Echo Dot. It’s one of the fastest device setups of
any product I’ve tested. And even if it's your first time setting up
one of these devices, the setup experience is still very fast. And the last thing that I think might just
sway me over to the Amazon Assistant over the Google Assistant as the default one I
recommend to people is Amazon’s willingness to experiment more with their hardware design
and their willingness to put their assistant on more devices. Plus their willingness to allow their assistant
to be on the same device as another assistant, which you can see working on various Sonos
speakers today. This is something both Apple and Google just
refuse to do which makes Amazon's ecosystem one of the most open and flexible in this
space. Now, while there is a lot to like about the
Echo and Echo Dot and the Assistants running on them, there is one glaring downside I’ve
run into with the new Echo and it’s a pretty big one. The little rubber feed to help with sound
isolation on the bottom, they actually have produced a few marks on my wood side table
which really sucks. It's not something that I expected to have
happen with this Echo, considering that I've had other smart speakers on this table before,
never had an issue, including the previous generation of the Echo. Now, rings around furniture from speakers
is something when you Google this issue, it is an issue that people run into quite a bit. Especially if your table is made out of wood
and it's like oiled, but for this type of table, still, not something I was expecting. Thankfully though the Echo Dot doesn't have
the same indents with its bottom and I haven't had any issues with it. Also, there are several things I think Amazon
could do to improve the Echo, Echo Dot, and the Amazon assistant. And the first one is supporting AirPlay 2
and or Google Chromecast for their speaker lineup. I think it would be great to be able to add
in speakers like the Echo to AirPlay and Google Cast groups. Google and Apple's speakers definitely have
a competitive edge here when it comes to grouping their speakers together with other third party
speakers into a single speaker group. Another thing I think Amazon could improve
is when the assistant is saying something but you want it to be quiet, it would be great
if you could just yell stop and it just stops talking. This is actually something you can now do
with the Google Assistant, this rolled out within the past year and it's something that
i wish Amazon would bring to the Amazon assistant as well. So, back to the question I asked at the start,
was I initially wrong about choosing the Google Assistant as the predominant assistant to
put in my home a few years back? I don't believe so, but now that it's 2023,
I just can't ignore the fact Amazon has caught up to Google in a lot of categories where
I thought Google was superior like with search queries, given how easy having an Echo or
Echo Dot makes smart home setup and control, the hardware design, and most importantly,
the speed of the Assistant, I think for most people looking for smart speaker in 2023,
Amazon speakers are the ones I'd likely suggest. except since the Echo put marks on my wood
table but the Echo Dot hasn’t, I’d probably skip out on this generation of the Echo and
just go for a Dot. It doesn’t share that same bottom design,
and has all the benefits of the Echo, just not as great sound but it’s also a less
expensive device to pickup and start out with anyway. So that would be the Echo device I would recommend. Now, if you're looking to get a smart speaker
mainly for playing music, my recommendation here would actually be to pick up a couple
of Sonos speakers and just skip out on Amazon speakers entirely. You can run the Amazon Assistant on them but
they also include AirPlay support so you can group them with other AirPlay speakers, or
use them as a sound output for your Apple TV or Mac, something I’ve been doing more
and more now that I have a stereo pair of Sonos Moves in my room. We’ve done reviews on the Sonos Move, Sonos
Roam and Sonos One, all of which you can run the Amazon Assistant on. Now Amazon Does have a more premium speaker,
the Echo Studio, which competes with the Sonos One and other speakers at the $199 US dollar
price level. But given it doesn't seem to support AirPlay
2 or Google Cast,I’d still recommend Sonos speakers for multi-room audio over the Echo
Studio. Sonos also has a lot more speakers within
its ecosystem, If you go with something like the Echo studio, you're really just locking
yourself into just Amazon-made speakers for your music listening. Now, if you're a Prime member and you just
casually want to listen to music, but you don't really necessarily have to have or care
about better sound quality. Then I think the Amazon Echo Dot might be
the perfect speaker for you mow that the new free version of Amazon Music that comes with
Prime includes Amazon music's entire music catalog. And it's now ad free with its default shuffle
mode, you can ask the Amazon Assistant on the device to play a specific song and it'll
play that song and then play similar songs like it, in shuffle mode, which actually makes
for a pretty decent casual listening experience if you have no interest in pain for a music
subscription. If you want to check the current price of
any of the devices I mentioned here in this video, I've left purchase links in the description
and comments below as well as here in this video. And if you're looking for what to watch next,
check out some of the other smart speaker reviews we've done on the channel and you
can get to all of those by clicking on the playlist to the right. Hit that thumbs up button if you like this
video, you found it helpful and interesting, and subscribe to the channel to see more reviews
like this one. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thank
you so much for watching.
