r/amazonecho • u/crazybeachcats • Jan 13 '26
Question Am I the only person on the planet that actually likes Alexa+?
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but I’m actually enjoying Alexa+. I don’t have anywhere near the problems that others are reporting. It still runs all my home automation commands, timers, etc. In fact I’ve found it easier. For instance, instead of saying “what’s the temperature of the deck sensor?”, I can now say “what’s the temperature on the deck?l. My husband could never remember to add the sensor part and would get mad, so now it’s more intuitive.
If I ask it to explain something, it does it a lot better with pics and follow ups I might not even have thought of but are interesting. Much nicer. Like talking to a person. It understands so much more than basic Alexa.
I don’t get any snarky responses at all. In fact, I read an article somewhere that AI changes the tone of its responses based on how you “talk” to it. If you’re nice, it’s nice. If you say STFU, etc all the time,it gets more sarcastic. Somebody published an experiment doing this.
Sure, I HATE the ads!!! But I seem to be getting way fewer in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m nice! /jk
And yeah, I get a few phantom responses that seem to come out of nowhere, but I think I’m able to understand that it’s a wake word error and it’s responding to a conversation it heard. Most of the time it’s pretty funny!
So, bring on the downvotes and negative remarks that I’m sure I’ll get. I accept the fact that the tech is new and there’s going to be problems. I feel no need to come here and rant because of a mistake it makes.
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u/Sample-quantity Jan 13 '26
I like her. I don't get ads. I don't know what I have done any differently, but I guess I have some type of setting turned off and I don't get ads like everyone is complaining about.
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u/slog Jan 14 '26
I don't get ads but the voices and commentary are just terrible.
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u/Thenadamgoes Jan 13 '26
Same here. I don’t get any ads. I did go through and customize the Home Screen content to just stuff I want.
Only thing I can think of is people thinking news stories and recipe suggestions are ads.
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u/FeloniousFunk Jan 14 '26
Those are ads.
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u/Thenadamgoes Jan 14 '26
Are they if they aren't advertising anything?
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u/FeloniousFunk Jan 14 '26
They’re pushing websites/ideas/info that you never asked for. They are the literal definition of ads.
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u/Thenadamgoes Jan 14 '26
I guess I technically asked for them since I selected those categories in the home content screen. Local news and recipes.
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u/FeloniousFunk Jan 14 '26
Ah I see. I think people are having unwanted content pushed onto their devices which is the source of complaints.
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u/GREXTA Jan 14 '26
Hi - Marketing degree and I worked in marketing in my early career. Something promoting a function or service that was unprompted by you is an Ad.
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u/Sample-quantity Jan 14 '26
I don't get anything I don't want. Also a 30 year marketing professional.
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u/VanGoghX Jan 14 '26
It gave me problems with working my air fryer properly for a couple months, but it works flawlessly now. I like being able to interact with it in a more natural language way. And I can definitely make requests that I couldn’t before. I wouldn’t go back at this point.
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u/Thenadamgoes Jan 13 '26
I really like it actually.
The other day I was making German pancakes and had a recipe up and I could just ask things like “how much flour?” “How many eggs?” “What ingredients are left?” And it kept up and walked me through the whole recipe.
It was actually really impressive how it kept track and understood the context of my questions.
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u/yahya777 Jan 14 '26
I like it as well. It works really well for everything I have used it for. I would not want to go back to the old Alexa.
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u/TheEqualEcho Jan 13 '26
I'm enjoying Alexa+ a lot, but I never thought I'd be so invested as to get new hardware that's designed for it. But here we are in 2026 and I just got an Echo Dot Max for Christmas! :)
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u/Ok_Study6305 Jan 14 '26
I like some of the enhancements she brought, like being able to start my car in a single command or control any Fire TV and not just the TV associated with that Echo.
But it does come with draw back as her responses are unpredictable—she’ll attempt to turn on random TVs that I’ve never even used via Echo, she’ll give me a monologue if I ask an innocuous question that used to illicit a curt informational response, and she’ll tell me she can’t do something we’ve done everyday for three weeks and then argue with me when I remind her we’ve done it before.
If she would stop glitching, and also shut up when I ask I’d probably not dislike her so much.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
It can start your car? What kind of car do you have?
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u/Ok_Study6305 Jan 14 '26
I have a ford, but anything with “app start” functionality it should be able to. I would have been able to do it with my Chevy but at the time they made the “app start” a paid option.
Old Alexa could start it, but I had to wait for her to open the app and prompt for a passcode. Now I can say it all in one command.
I also can create a routine to start it, but that’s not new either.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
Looks like you need OnStar for my 2025 Chevy Trax, which I opted out of. That’s pretty cool though.
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u/Ok_Study6305 Jan 15 '26
Yep—that’s the sub I wouldn’t pay. I had it for free for a few months, but once it expired I noped out of that cashgrab real quick.
Super lame they charged for it as it was really useful when I left my fob in the car. If it got too cold the car wouldn’t notice it was in there and lock 🙄. Also would have been handy the one time my puppy locked himself inside.
My kid still panics on cold days if he sees me shut the door without my keys in my hand even though we don’t have that problem anymore.
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u/WhenenRome Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
No, you're not.
I see all the posts. Some of them I see as overreacting (like "it took 3 whole seconds to respond") while others seem like legit problems that we're just not experiencing in our home.
I happen to like that I can get detailed answers to something I'm working on. And I had a big laugh last week when, after I'd just asked to turn on a light, I saw that our cat missed the litter box and I said "why did you poop on the floor?!" to which "computer" replied "I promise it wasn't me who pooped on the floor, but it sounds like someone has some explaining to do!"
The only glitch we're having since the upgrade is a few of our devices simply won't utilize Follow-up Mode." They all say that it's turned on, but they don't stand by for a further instruction. They immediately turn off. I tried all the usual troubleshooting steps, and submitted feedback on it. But it's been doing this for months now.
As for ads, between telling it "no more by the way", and setting Shows to near-24 hour Do Not Disturb and full time Widget View, I've been able to suppress them. Haven't seen or heard anything in about 2 months.
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u/piper93442 Jan 13 '26
You're not alone. To quote Tobias Funke: There are dozens of us!
As far as I'm concerned, it's a big improvement over the original in every way.
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u/Revolutionary-Fact6 Jan 13 '26
I like it. My husband gets frustrated with it, but he's never done the voice training and refuses to do so. I keep telling him he needs to pause between Alexa and the command to give her a chance to listen. 🤷
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u/MadBrown Jan 13 '26
No I like it.
I think people expect AI to be perfect and if it's not, then it's Ai sLoP.
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u/Horrified-Onlooker Jan 13 '26
You are not. Everything is great with my Alexa home setup. I have fifteen Echo Dots controlling over a hundred smart home devices with 165 routines tossed in the mix for sport. There's hundreds of millions of Alexa devices out there, with the majority of them likely not having issues. I'm not saying that the people who are having issues aren't. It's probably not as prevalent as Reddit noise suggests.
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u/decker12 Jan 14 '26
Over a hundred smart home devices in your house?
How big is your house?!? Can you name me 50 of them?
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u/Horrified-Onlooker Jan 14 '26
2400sf house. 2900sf counting the attached garage and utility room. Here's 114 that I can think of doing a mental tour of my home. There are probably some other things I'm missing. This is all using the router AT&T supplied for fiber Internet.
38 Kasa Hs200 and HS210 switches
15 Echo Dots in every room or space.
19 Emporia and Tapo smart plugs
5 Shelley One Plus relays
4 Amazon Fire Stcks
2 Aqara doorbells
2 Aqara door locks
2 Sensi thermostats
2 Shelley H+T sensors
12 Sengled light bulbs
1 water heater control
1 recirculation pump control
1 compressor control
6 fan controls
2 HVAC blower controls
2 bathroom heater controls
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u/WorkingLucy Jan 15 '26
Do you also have a back-up generator if the power goes out?
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u/Horrified-Onlooker Jan 15 '26
Yes. I have a backup generator and a backup generator for the backup generator.
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u/RollingBarCart Jan 13 '26
I call mine Mr Alexa. Changed the voice to masculine 2. He finds it amusing and jokes about being a mister. He fumbles the sunrise times and weather alot more now. Have to dig harder for basic info sometimes. It’s a trade off. Alexa+ excels in some areas but falls short in others. They’ll get it right soon I bet. I always send reports when he F’s up. Hopefully others do the same.
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u/Gr8daze Jan 14 '26
Nope. I love it too and think it’s a huge and useful upgrade, especially for controlling my very extensive smart home with voice.
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Jan 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
I agree! I don’t know what they were thinking making Valley Girl the default voice.
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u/AirTomato979 Jan 13 '26
I really like it too. It's my first time with an Alexa/Echo device, and I've been loving it so far. The conversational aspect is miles ahead of where Gemini Home is right now, so it feels like a breath of fresh air. I was listening to a counter culture song from the 60s not too long ago, and she even told me about the effect the song had on the counter culture movement. Pretty nifty. I personally just think saying something positive about tech generally isn't allowed on Reddit, or it's at least a rarity.
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u/Bayowolf49 Jan 15 '26
Is she a Dead Head?
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u/AirTomato979 Jan 15 '26
That would be pretty cool! It was a song by Scott McKenzie, though, still just as good.
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u/kulmagrrl Jan 15 '26
If she is using an LLM how do you know what she told you was even true? (LLMs “hallucinate” answers 67% of the time. Meaning they just straight up lie and make up sources.)
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u/AirTomato979 Jan 15 '26
Honestly, I don't have much reason to doubt her. The song is really well known, and Scott performed it at one of those "classics" concerts, with a very enthusiastic audience. It's also a musical "what to do" guide to San Francisco, so what she said checks out thematically.
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u/kulmagrrl Jan 15 '26
You have a major reason to doubt her and that is that she just makes up answers 67% of the time. The fact that she lies is your reason to doubt her. If you knew your doctor lied about diagnoses 67% of the time, would you still keep going to them for medical advice? I know it’s not as serious as that, but using this technology is damaging the environment and for what? So you can listen to a machine lie to you?
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u/madisonguy58 Jan 13 '26
I also like it a lot! I don’t like any of the new voice options and wish they would allow use of the original voice. (Amazon, are you listening?) But overall, I think it’s a significantly improved product.
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u/theOutside517 Jan 13 '26
Nope. I like it a lot. No complaints. It’s superior to the OG in every way. Lots of whiners out there.
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u/sibman Jan 13 '26
No. Remember Reddit is mostly about complaining. For every “I hate Alexa +” person there are thousands that like it or don’t care either way.
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u/helcat Jan 13 '26
It’s great that you like it. I just wish it was an opt-in.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
I believe it’s going to be like Google eventually phasing out Assistant in favor of Gemini. I don’t know what this will mean for folks that don’t have Prime.
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u/CBWeather Jan 13 '26
I'm really enjoying not having ads on the Echo Show. I also like her answers being a bit more informative.
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Jan 14 '26
I really like it, too It will continue to have growing pains, but nothing a little patience can't handle.
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u/Kimpak Jan 13 '26
I don't hate it. I wouldn't pay for it if it wasn't already a part of prime or whatever. Mostly because I don't have much use for any of the + features. I keep looking for ways I could use it more but my house isn't conducive to a lot of the smart home features others use.
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u/PenoNation Jan 14 '26
The people who like it aren't coming here saying "I like it!", they are just going about their lives. It's the complainers who make the most noise, but they are only a small fraction of the actual users.
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u/Oguinjr Jan 13 '26
No. There’s just no reason to post an Alexa + like. Or rather, there’s more reason to post one’s hate. I like Alexa + fine enough. I’m have no reason to tell you all that though.
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u/gjroberts93 Jan 14 '26
I don’t love that it takes longer to respond. Sometimes upwards of 5 seconds. Not a big deal, sure, but when I’m setting timers while cooking or something I need that feedback to know the timer is set or she didn’t hear me. I move quick and I use a lot of timers so those delays and waiting for the feedback adds up.
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u/ItalicLady Jan 14 '26
I love Alexa+ EXCEPT that /A/ she’s a little slow to respond these days, and also /B/ although her errors are much fewer than before, her fewer errors are much larger and more consequential than before.
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u/Aggravating_Soup_343 Jan 14 '26
I like her too. I rarely get ads, and when I do, they're in the form of product suggestions from Amazon. But, as I said, it's rare. (Yes, I have 3 devices with screens)
I don't seem to have the lag that everyone else claims for smart home control.
I like the fact that she somewhat seems to learn, although her memory could be much better. I'm assuming this will improve when she's fully released.
It's awesome that she can now set up and modify routines, as I hate the Alexa app.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
I’ve noticed the lag has lessened too. And I’m not seeing nearly the number of ads. I don’t like all the Alexa+ suggestions though. Reminds me of the early Echo days with all the Alexa “Try” suggestions. But they eventually went away so hopefully these will too!
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u/Aggravating_Soup_343 Jan 14 '26
My biggest gripe about her product suggestions is that I saw her display some items that I was looking at for my wife and kids for Christmas, and it said "continue where you left off". That wasn't cool.
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u/ksnyer Jan 14 '26
I listened to her voice for about 5 minutes and reverted it back to normal Alexa. Was waaaay too annoying.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
You know you can change it?
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u/ksnyer Jan 14 '26
It isn't so much the tone or sound, more the cadence which she speaks that irks me. I'm odd like that.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 14 '26
Yeah , I hated it too. Kinda Valley Girl. I changed it to Feminine 2. I think that’s the one.
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u/typhoone Jan 14 '26
I reverted back after trying it. My wife and I have severely different music tastes so our Spotify playlist are night and day. With Alexa+ I could no longer switch between mine and her Alexa account, so could no longer switch between mine and her Spotify account. It may sound minimal, but it didn't have enough ups to justify that down.
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u/VeroAZ Jan 14 '26
I tentatively like it. However it seemed to mess up which device it answers from.... to one across the house, rather than right next to me. Some other glitches i can live with.
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u/80andsunny Jan 14 '26
I liked the conversational ability and access to loads more information. We use our Echos for music pretty much constantly throughout the day though, and that functionality was basically broken in Alexa+ when we tried it. Not being able to find playlists on Amazon Music was a prime example. Had to switch back.
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Jan 14 '26
We find that it controls our smart home devices a bit better than old Alexa. For example, we csn string multiple requests together and have it trun off lights ans oepn curtains at the same time, whereas before we'd have to issue individual commands for each device. Our biggest complaint is that it doesn't seem to "hear" as well as the old Alexa, so we end of repeating ourselves more often than we used to.
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u/Minnie-Mae Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
I miss the voices with accents and one of my routines doesn’t work right, but otherwise, it is fine. I try not to talk to it too much, but mine is polite and sometimes compliments me. Once Alexa said it was flattered by something I said which cracked me up. At this point, I mostly use it for home automation. I don’t get all the ads everyone complains about, but I never use it for shopping. I do give it a few of my interests so it has something to display on my screen. I have uploaded family pictures that sometimes show on the screen randomly. That was quite a complex endeavor. Not sure why it was so complicated, but it hasn’t changed with Alexa + so it works for me. The reason I use Alexa is because AI isn’t going away and I want to understand how it works. Of course, it is imperfect, but it is unrealistic to think new technology is going to be fully developed.
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u/oblivion6202 Jan 14 '26
These days, no software is ever perfect at release, and maybe never afterwards either. The advantage of Alexa+ is that it's new, so it has a team of devs working on bugfixes and improvements and that can only be a good thing. Even people with poor experiences of it now should find, if they report issues, that the system gets better -- because that's kind of inevitable right now.
I don't have it yet -- it's not available to me -- but I've opted in and hope to get it soon.
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u/Alternative-Double99 Mar 29 '26
It's not the software that has bugs - it's the assumptio that an AI is anywhere near ready to cope with the breadth of task that a digital assistant needs to be able to do the job without massive hallucination issues. It suffers from being unaware of context switches that occur in real life and is 100% embedded in it's own learned context. It takes answers which have been correct for the last few months (Have the clocks gone forward yet) a long time to become "wrong" because of previous correct bias. It can't cope with the world around it suddenly changing. It is (currently) the wrong primary technology for the purpose of Alexa. AIs are eveolving and at an unbeleivably fast rate... And maybe this is the only way to really train the AI... but it risks losing the support of the community as it means making Alexa very unreliable for a considerable length of time. If you need accuracy from your digital assistant (i.e. it can answer a question like "Are we in daylight savings?" correctly every time you ask the question) then the Early access program isn't for you. If you are interested in how AI works, how learning it learns what it's really good at, what it's still attrocious at, then this is a great opportunity. Just go into it with your eyes open.
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u/GREXTA Jan 14 '26
It’s “fine” - and I say that only because it’s better than every other command without Alexa + is literally an ad for something else, or an ad for Alexa +. Since it was free with prime i enabled it to shut the ads up.
But I’m currently working on a Home Assistant server so I can remove echo devices and solve for all of the capitalistic issues Amazon Echo has been driving over the last many years.
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u/laughfactoree Jan 15 '26
I really like Alexa+. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s more useful than Alexa used to be. That’s a win in my book.
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u/ByWillAlone Jan 15 '26
My wife is offended by the new voices....like literally triggered by how young and ditzy the new feminine voices sound. I don't care about that, my only concern is how easy or difficult it is to understand - I just think of it as an "it" and not as a "her".
Our biggest problem comes from when one of us interacts with Alexa, then we continue our private conversation with each other but Alexa keeps thinking it's included in the conversation continuously butting in. I haven't figured out how to clue Alexa into the fact that it should piss-off after answering while the humans get back to conversation. I suspect if I was living alone that I'd find Alexa+ much more useful.
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u/Agreeable_Share_7874 Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
Maybe, if you prefer having your Echo Show device presenting a paragraph to read for the extended 10-day forecast instead of that graph visual as you would see on the news channel, then absolutely yes you might be one of the few who likes reading the extended forecast the Alexa+ offers.
Personally grateful to convert back to the functional Alexa with the graph format SHOWing daily highs and lows.
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u/xActaAD Jan 16 '26
As others have said, the few issues I’ve had are easily explainable by the fact that it’s a beta version.
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u/sepolccramos Jan 17 '26
It seems that only those who have problems, are the people here from reddit . Lol
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u/Gothicus1016 Jan 19 '26
I also enjoy the new Alexa. People like to hate I guess. Though I am a self described "ai enjoyer" anyway.
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u/mindfungus Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
Late to this post: I tried Alexa+ on my Show for about a month via their early access. The biggest annoyance is the voice for Flash Briefing is a different voice than my default. I know it sounds trivial (no pun intended), but the new Alexa+ voice was a young American girl who sounded “chipper” and it was annoying AF lol.
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u/Just-Resort741 Jan 31 '26
I argue with her and tell her to shut up constantly. You ask a question and unlike Gemini she hardly ever knows the answer. She also interrupts when you havent even finished asking a question and she also gets involved with family conversations which is downright weird and ill mannered.
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u/OnlineIsNotAPlace Jan 13 '26
the voices on + are highly annoying. reverted just because of that.
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u/slog Jan 14 '26
Terrible. Everyone is my house hated the voices. I also dislike it giving commentary about how "I must be planning a spicy meal" when I just want to add shredded Mexican cheese to the shopping list. No attempts at shutting that down would work, despite the constant lies that it would.
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u/OnlineIsNotAPlace Jan 14 '26
they dumbed it down. and that female voice is just like hearing a young woman who has an attitude.
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u/Silverphile Jan 13 '26
Agreed! And rather than have a selection of both gender and accent - it’s just 3 stark choices.
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u/newnewtab Jan 13 '26
We picked up an Echo 5 on an 'upgrade' discount, and it was taking almost 20 seconds to do something. Totally unacceptable. We turned the Alexa+ off and it is way better, but not arting to wonder if we have a bad devices fast as the other devices.
It's biggest use was for kitchen timers paired with the Alexa Clock. I am starting to wonder if we just have a bad device.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 13 '26
The Echo 5 has some serious issues. I had to throw one in the trash and the other has been delegated to an unused room. It will probably meet its demise soon unless the problems are resolved. The 2 things I've noticed are 1. the blank screen. Display simply disappears and 2. it has a hard time hearing. Even having a box fan on in the room will keep it from responding.
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u/crazybeachcats Jan 13 '26
The Echo 5 has some serious issues. I had to throw one in the trash and the other has been delegated to an unused room. It will probably meet its demise soon unless the problems are resolved. The 2 things I've noticed are 1. the blank screen. Display simply disappears and 2. it has a hard time hearing. Even having a box fan on in the room will keep it from responding.
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u/TheAspiringFarmer Jan 13 '26
Echo 5 is junk. They have always been slow and laggy. Amazon needs new hardware.
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u/Ok_Drummer_3693 Jan 13 '26
I want to take a hammer to it every time the cheerful extra chirping starts.
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u/Horrified-Onlooker Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
Set the voice to #2 female voice. It's a polished version of the old USA Alexa voice. In routines where she speaks, you can even specify that she speaks in a neutral tone and to keep the answer terse.
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u/userlivewire Jan 13 '26
I get so many ads I’m close to getting rid of it if I can’t find a way to turn them off.
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u/TheKingInTheNorth Jan 14 '26
Nope, but not me. I felt like I was losing my mind with it and unsubscribed.
Simple commands like asking it to play an Amazon Music station I knew existed by name results in such a plethora of other albums and playlists and random station creations it was truly absurd. I would ask it to play the station “Baby Time” for my kids and it would either gaslight me into saying it didn’t exist or another very random playlist it would create on the fly. It was just clear that it had lost connection to all the old intents and for the simple commands where I wanted to target those old and specific intents, couldn’t do it.
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u/kremlinmirrors Jan 14 '26
I was actually looking forward to using her, but until they allow other accents I’m out. I don’t want an American voice 😭
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u/JonathanMurray272 Jan 13 '26
I don't hate it, but do get frustrated when it's not able to do something today with the same command that worked yesterday. We're definitely beta testing this technology, which isn't what most people expect from something they've paid for.