Amazon Echo’s Alexa miles ahead of Apple’s Siri on commands

Amazon has set the pace when it comes to voice command systems and despite its limits Alexa is a thing of beauty.

When considering voice systems on smartphones and smarthomes, Amazon Echo’s Alexa is far better than Siri.

Echo is an intelligent 23.5cm tall cylindrical speaker that sits in your lounge room and responds to voice commands that start with “Alexa”. It does everything from turn on a light, a power point, a TV, or connected ceiling fan to telling the time, weather, adjusting a thermostat, playing music, reading news bulletins, telling jokes, playing games and compiling your shopping list.

It says “Good morning” and “Goodnight, sleep tight” and recommends what you have for breakfast. And that’s the start.

When she’s playing music you can ask her to turn the volume up or down, to stop, or if you’re in an impolite mood, even to “shut up”. She doesn’t take offence.

(If there’s a human called “Alexa” in your home, don’t despair. You can alter her trigger name to “Echo” or “Amazon”.)

It’s a year since the public could buy Echo after an initial rollout to Amazon Prime members. By April, Amazon had sold more than 3 million units and now has amassed more than 1400 skills with more than 10,000 developers aboard. I’ve also found it accurate in understanding what I’m saying even when music is playing thanks to its sensitive ­microphones, and noise-cancellation technology.

Echo’s Achilles heel is Amazon’s unwillingness to look beyond the US. Australia is locked into US-centric news and sport, and a default US weather location defined by a US postcode. Neither the Alexa app or the alexa.amazon.com website accepts a non-US timezone and a US shipping address has to be nominated for purchase.

You can get the weather anywhere by nominating the location. No problem. For time, you can say “What is the time in Brisbane?” But you need the right timezone to add calendar entries. Some ­locals countered the problem by entering a postcode in Guam such as 96910. It shares AEST although not daylight saving time.

Another approach is to install a Google Chrome plug-in called “request maker”, which lets you override Amazon’s settings and send packet data directly from inside Chrome to Amazon. It’s a handy hack. I now have “Australia/Sydney” as my Echo’s timezone and can add calendar entries in local time.

One new notable function is “Ask my buddy”. You set up an account, and link it to Echo through the Alexa app. Saying “Alexa, ask my buddy to alert Susan” will then call and text Susan and tell her you need help. Alexa is a whiz at natural language processing, so you can vary what you say.

An exception is when you access a third-party app. You include “ask” and the app name. For example, for Food Tracker, you’d begin with “Ask Food Tracker how much fat is in a bagel and cream cheese”. When seeking a cocktail recipe with the Bartender app, you’d say: “Alexa, ask Bartender how do I make a Fluffy Duck”, and she’ll read the ingredients and mixing instructions.

Another special word is “trigger”. You use it when you’ve ­created your own Alexa command and linked it via the amazing website ifttt.com, which stands for “if this then that”.

I have a Logitech Harmony Hub, a little black box that sends the same infra-red and Bluetooth signals to my TV as would a remote. Using ifttt.com, I have linked Alexa commands to turn my TV on or off with the correct STB sound settings, turn on or off the TV with Apple TV selected, and turn on the TV with a particular channel selected. I can select other channels by voice. I say “Alexa trigger watch SBS” and she obliges.

If Amazon and a third party have integrated a service you can drop “ask” and “trigger”. I have an internet-connected Big Ass Haiku ceiling fan above my bed that does crazy things. When the Jawbone Up wristband was the rage, the fan could detect when I was asleep and adjust its spinning to a predetermined sleep setting. Recently Haiku was integrated with Echo. Now I can say “Alexa, turn on my bedroom fan” or “set my bedroom fan to 50 per cent” and similarly adjust the intensity of the fan’s integrated light.

I could write pages on what Echo does, but here’s a few. She can read Audible audiobooks and you can command her by voice to stop, resume, stop reading in, say, 10 minutes. You can ask Alexa to play any artist or music genre you like. I don’t use Prime but she plays anything I want on Pandora. “Alexa, play The Who on Pandora”.

Alexa also integrates with thermostats by Nest, Honeywell, and Scion so you can ask her to turn the temperature up and down with these devices. You can ask her for your horoscope, she’ll read extracts from The Bible, tells Father’s Day jokes, and turns on sprinklers if you have a Rachio smart sprinkler controller.

Using IFTTT, you can program Alexa to get D-Link to turn on its home security cameras and sensors as you leave home. You utter the command to activate it as you walk out the door.

Some things don’t work locally because you need a US location, such as Alexa calling you an Uber, organising you a plumber with Homeadvisor, and telling you what movies are playing locally.

Alexa has recently been joined by two variants. One, Echo Dot ($US89.99/$120.68), is a cut down Echo for other rooms so you don’t have to shout commands across a home. Tap ($US129.99/$174.32) is a portable battery supported version. You order them via Alexa. Your account address has to be in the US and you must be a Prime member. There’s also a voice remote control for Echo ($US29.99/$40.18)

Given that third party developers have been adding functions since August last year, Echo’s capabilities are astonishing. You can ask: “Alexa, what new features do you have?”. You then ask Alexa to enable ones you want. In the case of the game Jeopardy: “Alexa, enable Jeopardy”.

In future could I love Siri, Cortana or Google Now as much as Alexa? In Siri’s case, Apple has recently opened up Siri on the iPhone to developers so expect astonishing functionality over the next months. Once that happens, I could change my mind. Love of a voice command system is conditional, not absolute.

Amazon Echo

Rating: 9/10

Cost: $US179.99 ($241.37)