Echo Amazon: the perfect gift for any gadget lover

As a tech journalist, I try out all sorts of amazing gadgets. But this is the one I’ve bought myself for Christmas.

As a personal technology journalist, people sometimes ask me what gadget I’d buy myself at Christmas. I suppose it’s a way of finding out, of all the devices that roll past our desk, which ones I would privately lust after at this time.

This year I’ve bought one that’s not meant to be sold here yet: Amazon’s amazing voice activated home assistant, Echo. It’s a thin cylindrical Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled speaker that is a personal assistant with lots of smarts. You speak commands to it when you’re at home, you chat away, and it responds.

You wake up Echo using a trigger word. I settled for the default “Alexa”, but you can choose anything you like. Just don’t choose the name of a family member, or your dog or cat, otherwise it will keep interrupting your conversations.

Echo opens up the amazing world of voice recognition and activation for home automation, although it is US-centric at the moment, and the idea is still in its infancy.

But it has a few killer features I really like. One is an ability to compile a shopping list. So when I went to the fridge, and found there was a little milk, I simply called out “Alexa, add milk to my shopping list”, and she did exactly that. So now when I go to the supermarket, I have a shopping list pre-written for me on my smartphone which includes milk.

And when I said “Alexa, remind me to return my library books”, she said she’d added it to my “to do” list. All through voice communication. Reminders and lists are posted to the Alexa app on your smartphone.

Another great feature is an ability to connect to existing home automation systems, for example Phillips Hue. Currently I have a Phillips hub linked to a series of overhead and party lights.

With a touch of one button on the hub, Echo recognised the Phillips system. By requesting a device search, it connected to a Belkin WeMo switch as well. Using the Alexa smartphone app, I was able to group these items together and have Echo turn them on and off in one voice command.

So when I said: “Alexa, turn on the apartment lights”, as in the accompanying video, it switched on the lot. I could still ask it to switch on the lamp individually if I wanted, And in the case of the Hue lights, I could ask Alexa to dim them to 60 per cent.

As well as Belkin WeMo and Phillips Hue, Echo also works with SmartThings, now owned by Samsung. And you can create Echo commands using the IFTTT.com (if this then that) event system, so this sky is the limit. I really felt this is a window into the world of the future and I expect to play around with this some more.

Echo’s physical prowess is it speaker. You can ask Echo to play music from a variety of sources such as Amazon Prime Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn. I asked it to play my favourite Pandora station “The Who”. And you can tell Echo to stop when you’ve had enough.

Unfortunately music plays only through the Echo speaker. You can’t route it to Bluetooth speakers or to your home sound system. That would be a great feature to have.

Like Apple’s Siri and Google Now personal assistants, Echo is a font of all knowledge. I can ask Alexa for the weather in Sydney today, and for the forecast for tomorrow. She reads them out. But to get full functionality, such as the list of Chinese restaurants close by, she needs a US-based address at this time.

I could ask Echo what is the capital of Myanmar and the population of Indonesia and it gave me a run down on who Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten and Sir Donald Bradman are when I asked about them.

Echo could read news headlines on any subject or keyword I chose through Trove. It could tell me what the current travel time is to preset destinations such as the office. In the accompanying app, there are 10 pages of extra features you can add to Echo. For example, when I added the bartender feature, I could say: “Alexa, ask the bartender what is a ‘fluffy duck’, and she read back the ingredients and recipe.

I could ask Echo to translate phrases and words to other languages, and she would read back the translations. But I found Echo to be finicky about the way you phrased translation requests. Sometimes she wouldn’t understand them.

As expected, Echo is a whiz on US politics, and can even give you a detailed rundown on the fortunes of US parties and individual politicians on Twitter. She was reading me out quite detailed analytics.

There are limitations to the phrases that Echo understands, and it’s not natural language voice recognition by any means. Her general knowledge has definite limits. However its comprehension of what I said was accurate, and for the most part, responses were really fast.

Echo is a forerunner of other connected home systems that we’ll see on the market shortly. They include Apple’s long awaited HomeKit and SmartThings. HomeKit compatible devices are starting to appear on the Australian market, so it should be a bumper year in home automation next year.

Echo has been around for a year in the US, available initially to Amazon Prime members. Let’s hope Amazon localises Echo, to make it even more functional here. In any case, I’m glad I selected Echo to play around with this Christmas.

To get Echo, you’ll need to buy it online through amazon.com. It costs around $250 plus postage. If you are geolocked from buying it, you’ll likely have to get it through a friend in the US or using a professional re-mailing service such as Big Apple Buddy in the US or PriceUSA locally. They can purchase it on your behalf in the US and mail it to you here in Australia.

I had to download the Alexa app through the US iTunes store.

4 out of 5 stars.

Journalist Chris Griffith with his Amazon Echo domestic personal assistant.