Amazon Echo - Anybody thinking of getting it

I saw this the other day, looked at the demo videos and decided maybe it's something that I could make use of.
More than that as a tech review guy, I would love to get my hands on it just to put out a good quality review.

Something tells me out of the box it will have some neat tricks but be mostly just a "toy" in where most features could be done on your phone.

However.... I bet once this thing gets taken apart and mods/hacks start getting into it. All of a sudden this might become the must have thing for power users, home automation, and a bunch of other un-intended tasks.

At its core it seems like it will be a really good mic, so it could be hacked to be a great conference microphone or even a VOIP conference system since it has BT connectivity and a speaker.

It will be the BT connectivity that opens all the major doors, but it also has Wifi so lets not discount that since many devices are interfaces and accessed via network connection.

If I snap one up would you guys be interested in the review and putting it through its paces?

 

Yeah sure.. It looks interesting too.. Read about it on Androidcentral and liked the concept.. Main problem for me is that I'm not a prime member so the normal price is a bit too expensive for me..

 

I do not have prime right now either since my GF got it and I did not want us to both have one at the same time.
I have a feeling the $99 price will apply to everybody (or maybe even more likely they will sell it for $199 and include a 1 Year prime membership with it that cost $99) but for now they are just filtering it out to prime members to help with supply demand and to make prime members feel special.

 

It's a very neat concept and (assuming the voice recognition works well) could be pretty useful to a lot of people.

However, I'm not too keen on having a bunch of microphones listen to me anytime I'm in a room with Echo. Even if there is a mic-off button on the top.

 

I don't see the point of it, from a consumer perspective. It sounds like a device that makes it easier to buy things on Amazon. So I see the point for Amazon. But other than convenience for that, I'm not sure what I get from it.

Nevertheless I'd be interested in a review if you do get one. In particular I'd be curious if there are non-Amazon features that it does noticeably better than other devices such as computers and phones already can.

 

I wanna see all the outtakes of the promo vids where the mic didn't pick up what they were saying 20 times before it got it right.

I also want to see a review.

 

I had a dream last night that I was able to hack the voice and change it to Glados from Portal and change the activation word to Glados.

If I can make this happen it just paid for itself already

Pretty sure you can program any activation word aka "name" the voice part not so sure how that would get done.

 

Give is this voice right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDeKT9mxSHg

And i will throw amazon all my money