A:AnswerHey Gary,
You can through several options. For example, if you own Philips Hue Lights the Echo can connect to the bridge.
If you are trying to convert other lights such as lamps without going the Smart Light route you can always buy Smart WiFi Outlets such as Belkin Wemo Outlets. These would simply supply power or cut power to the lamp. Just a heads up, Insignia has a WiFi outlet that does not work the Amazon Echo.
And as always, please think about Geek Squad Two Year Product Replacements for these products.
A:AnswerThey each operate independently but can be set up under the same account to share things like music, calendars, etc. They do not talk directly to each other for now (hopefully) but they will both work with all of your smart home gadgets.
A:AnswerHello Confused,
So, as someone who first owned the Echo and recently purchased the Dot for their bedroom, I can tell you a lot about the differences.
The first, and most noticeable, is the speaker quality. The Echo has an amazing speaker and when Alexa speaks she sounds almost natural. The Dot does not have a very good speaker which turns her voice into the typical flat A.I. type. This is also an incredible difference if you are looking for speaker quality. That being said, you can hook the Dot up to a speaker system to simply avoid that entire situation.
Next would be how well she listens. The Echo works nearly every time I need it to. I find myself yelling at my dot a lot. Recently she has learned to listen a bit better but I still find myself frustrated.
The dot also randomly has connectivity issues. I have not experienced this a single time with the Echo, but my dot will randomly just become disconnected. It will by itself reconnect though. I have talked to others who own the dot and this is just a common issue.
Overall, the Echo is worth the extra money for functionality reasons. However, both do exactly the same things like making shopping list, setting alarms, timers, fun facts, games, etc. As frustrated as I get with my Dot, it does do what I need it to, I just wish it did it better.
Please keep in mind the Geek Squad Two Year Product Replacement. This is newer tech.
A:AnswerHello,
Yes, The Amazon Echo has three different names you can call it (Each is referred to as a 'Wake Word'.)
The default is "Alexa" which is why so many of us refer to the Amazon Echo as "Alexa."
You can also set her to answer to either "Echo" or "Amazon" in case anyone in your home may be named Alexa.
