Category: Gift Ideas

My Favorite Things About The Echo Dot

9/6/2019

Look, It's Going to Annoy Me.

"Who wants that in their house?" I asked, scoffing at the very idea of a smart device that would listen to everything I said, frustrate me when it misunderstood, and make itself a nuisance.

My husband didn't hear me, apparently, because he bought not ONE Echo Dot for Christmas, but FOUR. One for the kitchen, one for my office, one for the boys and one for the girls.

Here we are, nine months later, and I absolutely LOVE my devices. Let me tell you all the awesome things we do with this thing.

The FIRST thing we used our Dots for was totally because of our kids. You see, they LOVE audiobooks and listen to them all the time. Sometimes they color and listen, or clean their rooms and listen, but mostly they listen just before going to bed. We started doing audiobooks seriously three years ago when my younger children couldn't be satisfied with my voice reading to them for twenty minutes a day.

So we had an Audible membership (WORTH IT if you have children or enjoy listening to things while you go about your day) and my kids usually listened on a Kindle turned up as loud as possible. With the Echo Dot, they could say, "Alexa, open the audiobook The Blue Fairy." Or maybe "Alexa, play my Matilda book." And on the books came, right where they had left off. And guess what? We could set TIMERS. "Alexa, stop playing the book after twenty minutes." Wha--?! This meant I didn't have to sneak into their rooms after they'd fallen asleep, fish a Kindle from wherever it was hiding, and turn it off to save the battery. Amazing.

I Mean. It Can't Be That Great.

I tried to put off using it myself. I really did. I might be a Millenial, but that doesn't mean I have to embrace each and every new technology at once. But I had been listening to Amazon Prime Music for a while, through my computer and an app on my phone. It was helping me write, I found, to attach music to chapters and characters.

So one day, I said, "Alexa, open my playlist for Christian and Rebecca."

And my playlist HAPPENED. Still. Not all that awesome. I made the playlist myself. So then I said, "Alexa, play music I might like." And wow, did she! Then as I enjoyed a song, I'd interrupt. "Alexa, what's the name of this song? Alexa, add it to my playlist. Alexa, play more songs by this artist."

We love our Prime Music membership. (We're always listening to it in the house, car, exercising, working, etc.) The speaker on the Echo Dot is incredible. We can turn up the music and dance, turn it down really low to avoid bothering people in the next room and STILL get great sound quality, AND I can even plug in my headphones at my desk when I'm really trying to work in the dead of night.

Let's not forget the homework help and educational aspect of this nifty device. We can check math problems (after doing the work ourselves) and ask interesting questions such as "who was the twenty-third president?" and "can cats see in the dark?" My kids also play a lot of the trivia and choose-your-own-adventure games. Then we went all in and got "smart" light bulbs. It's a husband thing, in our house. Now he can just tell a device to turn off the lights rather than get out of bed once he's all cozy.

So. Yup. I'm a Believer.

Our Echo Dots are absolutely integrated into our lives. I add stuff to a shopping list, set reminders, alarms for cooking and children things (time-out, reading, video games, etc), and not a day goes by that I don't ask my Echo to do something for me. I love it. If you've been reluctant to give it a try, please do. We're an Amazon device family. So far, no regrets!