Amazon Echo & Alexa - Voice Assistant done right?

How things change – Just a year ago, I was decidedly dismissive of digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa. I’d had some experience with Siri, but she hadn’t exactly impressed me with her capabilities. At the same time, smart speakers as such just seemed too limiting in my eyes. I’m someone who prefers visual feedback, rather than just hearing a voice. It was only when Amazon came out with the first Echo Show speakers that my interest was piqued. Even then, it would take until the waning days of 2019 for me to finally make the jump. The decision to go for an Echo speaker was an impulse, that literally hit me in the last 3 hours of Black Friday. Yes, for once, I actually took part in that! Anyway, Amazon had a package deal on a Philips Hue multipack and an Amazon Echo Show 5 for less than the regular retail price of either of the 2 products, so I decided to take the plunge.

Now what exactly is the Echo Show 5? In effect, it is an Echo smart speaker with a 5.5“ touch screen on the front, as well as a 720p HD camera for video calls. Without wanting to spoil too much, but that display makes all the difference. At 410 grams, it is surprisingly heavy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to speakers, but more on that later. The front and bottom of the device are dominated by plastic, with the bottom being rubberized to prevent slipping, while the back is covered by fabric. There’s not much in the way of physical connections, with only a power connection, micro USB port and 3.5mm audio port on the back of the device. There’s no ethernet plug, so you’ll have to connect to your local WiFi. And that’s basically all there is to say about the outside of the device.

The Echo Show 5 is really much more compact that you might expect, as you can see here on my nightstand.

The main purpose of the Echo lineup is of course to serve as a hardware platform for Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant, especially since Alexa doesn’t have a native smartphone ecosystem to work of, unlike Siri or Google Assistant. I’ll go more into detail on Alexa in a later paragraph, for now, I’ll focus on the setup. Here’s where the display comes into its own, as all the setup steps can be done on the device itself. That being said, if you make a mistake, you‘ll be left scratching your head as to what exactly went wrong, since the error messages displayed are pretty vague and unhelpful. Also, while my specific Show 5 arrived fully updated, you could just as well end up in a situation where you‘ll have to wait for a small eternity for all the updates to download and install, so don‘t do the setup five minutes before going to bed.

While setup is generally straightforward...

...I recommend against doing it in a rush...

...as it can take some time to get through it.

This is particularly true once it comes to Alexa’s Skills, which is what Amazon calls the plugins or apps for Alexa. While Alexa on her own is already pretty impressive, it is these skills that really make the system useful, as they allow the integration of third-party services, such as Todoist, Philips Hue, or similar services. It is these services that make Alexa into an actual assistant, rather than just a nice gimmick. Music services such as Apple Music or Spotify can be implemented equally easily, and while Amazon is understandably pushing its own Amazon Music service on the Echo platform, setting a third party service as your default option is pretty easy in the app. On the video front, things aren’t quite as rosy. While Amazon Prime Video is rather obviously available on the Echo Show 5, there is no way to integrate third party video services such as YouTube, which have to be opened via the built in web browser. For me, this isn’t really a big issue, since the only time I really watch videos on the Echo Show 5 is during the morning briefing.

Given the size and shape, it's likely that the Echo Show 5 will be pulling alarm clock duty in many households.

Oh, didn’t I mention that yet? One of the core elements of Alexa are the so-called routines. These are sequences of events triggered by a single voice command, and can range from the simple to the complex. Due to my current job I’m not really at home that much anymore, but I do have two routines set up that are really handy. One is a morning routine that provides me with the morning briefing I mentioned above, consisting of weather and traffic information, a roundup of the day’s news, and a look at my calendar. Note that this only encompasses private calendars, and to be honest, given how many of my business calendar entries are set up according to US time zones, I’m not too sad about that. The other routine is one that enables me to shut down the entire apartment when I’m going to bed at night, something that really saves time, particularly when you’ve been stuck in front of the TV or computer for too long, as has occasionally happened to me.

The Echo Show 5 alternates between the clock face and trending topics or usage suggestions. This might be annoying to some, but it's not really an issue for me. 

With all that being said, let’s get to the meat and bones of this issue. How does it perform in real life? Well, I’ve had the system for roughly two weeks now, and in that time, it has become an integral part of my routines. In fact, I’ve found myself using it much more than say Siri, particularly in situations when using one of my other devices is not an option or I’ve just left them in another room. This is helped by Alexa’s excellent voice recognition capabilities that actually enable her to comprehend even more complex requests. I’ve only had two misunderstood commands so far, and one of those was due to a mistake while setting up the skill for my Netatmo weather station. Another surprise was the quality of the speaker. I had originally planned to hook up my B&O Play A1 speaker to the 3.5mm jack of the back of the Echo, since I was expecting your typical cheap alarm clock type sound quality. but suffice to say that’s been shelved. The sound quality is impressive for such a device, and is more than loud enough even at 50% of maximum volume. It’s still inferior to the Play A1, but not by much, and certainly more than powerful enough as a standalone audio player in my bedroom.

It is as a smart home control unit that the Echo Show 5 really shines.

Now, since we’re talking about a smart speaker with a built-in camera, I need to address a rather large and ungainly elephant in the room. No, not me, privacy! Jeez, some people… anyway, there have been quite a few incidents regarding the improper handling of voice recordings by smart assistants such as Siri or Alexa. The risk of such a leak is always present when using a smart assistant, however from what I’ve seen, the Echo Show 5 and Alexa are pretty well set up in this regard. First of all, there’s the physical camera slider, which not only disables the camera, but also makes it impossible for the lens to see anything. The microphones can be muted with a dedicated button as well, although there’s no physical disconnect involved there from what I can tell. The more interesting stuff happens in the Alexa App though, where you can easily see, search and delete your voice command history, either in bulk, or for individual commands. Granted, voice commands are still sent to Amazon servers to be analysed, but that is primarily due to the hardware requirements for human speech analysis. Don’t get me wrong, Amazon is actually ahead of privacy gurus Apple in this regard, who only enable users to delete their Siri history in bulk and not to review or delete individual commands and requests. Privacy is still a testy subject, I get that, but Amazon is certainly putting in quite a bit of effort on that front.

A physical slider that disables the camera and blocks the lens should address a lot of privacy concerns. On my device, it is almost always closed.

All in all, while it may still be early days, I find that the Echo Show 5 is a really nifty little device that packs a lot of punch into a small package the size of an old-timey radio alarm clock. Alexa is surprisingly useful as a digital assistant, and the Skills concept that Amazon has developed really adds immensely. Now granted, it is still early days, but so far, I’ve definitely not experienced any buyer’s regret. In fact, I’m planning on getting the smaller Echo Dot for both the Living Room/Kitchen area and my home office sometime early in the new year.