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If you’re looking to dip your toes into the smart home market, the Echo Dot is a great place to start. The Echo Dot is an incredibly affordable product and comes in three different models.
The idea is that you can setup Alexa routines that activate or deactivate depending on where you are. A bit like you can do with third party motion sensors, but without the middle man. There’s an LED ring at the bottom of the speaker that glows blue when Alexa is listening to a voice instruction, red when the microphone is muted, or yellow when there’s a notification or the speaker has lost its Wi-Fi connection. Below this is a rubber disc designed to protect the surface on which the speaker is placed from scratches. This is a minor complaint. However, for a low profile device, Dot’s cloth covering is harder to clean than the original plastic. Be mindful of dust, because you won’t want to try and clean off several months of build-up. Is it worth it? When we put a range of trivia-related questions to Alexa, while also asking for spellings and definitions, and even a handful of mathematics questions, it was able to answer them with ease and the results were identical to those given by Alexa on a standard Echo Dot. A new low-power mode will reduce the Echo Dot’s power consumption while it’s idle, though there are a few caveats. The Dot won’t enter low-power mode if you linked a Spotify account to your Alexa account, if Alexa Guard is in Away mode, if there’s an active notification, if you have an external speaker plugged into the Dot, or if a smart home device is connected directly to the Dot via Bluetooth.
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I want more granular control. For example, it would be better if an Echo device could be allowed to control devices in the same room. That way, my daughter could ask Alexa to close her curtains and turn off her lights, without being able to control devices around the house.
Alexa can even answer basic questions for you by searching online. If you’re easily distracted by screens, it’s a nice alternative when working.
Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen)
In no time at all, my toddler was shouting “Lexa, JoJo Siwa Boomerang!” and to my chagrin, the Echo Dot responded by playing the teen pop star’s songs in all their bubbly glory. My daughter bopped around the room as Siwa’s effervescent voice rose above the thumpy bass line. If you have more than one device in your home, you can also use your Echo Dot as part of an intercom system. This is useful if you live in a larger, multi-bedroom home. This speaker also has the temperature sensor that the other new Echo Dot models have, which lets you make Alexa Routines based on the temperature in a room. Sound quality Once connected, the setup process should automatically begin in the app. If not, head to Alexa Devices, then selectAdd Alexa Device within the app. When that’s done, you’re ready to start talking to your device. What can the Echo Dot do? 1) Home assistant and entertainment in one device The new Echo Dot comes with a brand new design that looks like a sphere. Not an actual sphere, obviously, as the base is flat to make it safely stand on surfaces. The spherical part is covered with a fabric that feels pleasant to touch. The base, on the other hand, is your regular old matte plastic. The device is nearly 9 centimetres tall -- or 3.5 inches for the weirdo, imperial-loving folks out there. The old, third-generation Echo Dot had a shorter and flat form factor, making it more discreet and easier to mount on a wall, so some people might not like the design change here. But one could argue that this new design is more eye-catching and distributes sound a bit better. There are three colour options: Charcoal Grey, White and Twilight Blue. Interestingly they all come with a white cable for some reason, yet you can use the previous gen's power adapter too. The Blue Ring
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