It’s finally here; Alexa Plus has a name, an imminent rollout schedule, and a price tag of $19.99 (or free as part of an Amazon Prime membership.) Sure, we don’t have any information on an international rollout, but having a tangible Alexa Plus service is enough good news for one day.
There were few surprises in the demonstration; we’ve known since 2023 what Amazon ideally wanted its upskilled voice assistant to look like, and by and large, that’s what was delivered, albeit later than initially hoped.
We covered all the biggest news in our Alexa Plus live blog and summarized the key features and pricing information, but there’s plenty that wasn’t covered in depth at the event to unpack. Thankfully, Amazon has released a blog with all of the key features and functionalities in Alexa Plus, which outlines some more specific and quality-of-life adjustments that could make the subscription service all the more worth it.
Many of the newly announced AI tools are on a par with other AI assistants; however, Alexa has one major feather in its cap. While much of its competition centers around your phone or laptop as the main interface, Alexa is housed around your home. As someone trying to use their phone less, not more, this puts Alexa as my personal front-runner as an AI assistant.
I use Alexa daily to help me manage my household, and let me tell you, some of the incoming features are a must-have. Here are the features I’m most excited for.
Personalization was a key theme of the day, with various demonstrations showing how Alexa Plus will be able to curate media to your personal needs.
That comes in various forms, with Amazon’s blog post highlighting a few. For me, the most exciting change is to Daily News briefings. Amazon says Alexa Plus can deliver personalized news briefings based on your interests, so if you chose tech, for example, you might get TechRadar’s daily headlines served to you while you get ready in the morning.
Elsewhere, Alexa is improving its personalization with music suggestions, building recommendations based on your mood, environment, and contextual information it knows about your preferences.
This extends beyond voice control, too. For You, widgets can be set up to track specific topics in real-time, whether that’s freshly released tickets to see your favorite artists or deal alerts for a product you’ve been pining for.
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2. Improved search capabilities
Across the board, natural language processing improves Alexa Plus’ ability to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Want to listen to a podcast, but specifically one that’s under 20 minutes? Alexa Plus can help. Trying to find a specific song, but you can’t remember anything except a few details and lyrics? Alexa Plus will bring the tunes.
Sure, that’s cool, but you know what’s even cooler? You’ll be able to ask Alexa Plus to find specific scenes in media and play them, meaning you’ll never reach for that fast-forward button again when the time comes to re-watch your favorite movie action sequence.
3. Topic tracking
I’ve alluded to it already in this article, but Alexa will actually be able to track and notify you with news on specific subjects. Whether that’s a live sports match or an artist you like who is prone to stealth-dropping albums and concerts.
This feature is powered by what Amazon calls Experts, a collection of trusted sources – including TechRadar – which it collects information from to keep you informed. Apologies in advance if that means you have to hear more from me than you’d like.
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4. Smoother smart home control
Generally, Alexa Plus offers some fantastic conversational upgrades, but nowhere will this be more crucial than in the smart home of tomorrow.
Amazon talked a lot about how the new subscription service means “No more Alexa-speak,” which basically means no more repeatedly attempting to prompt Alexa on something you know it can do – or just you think it should be able to do – to figure out the exact right way of asking for it.
Device control is one of the most significant issues I have with standard Alexa, wherein the assistant will regularly decide it no longer likes the name I’ve given my devices. Similarly, it’s frustrating that until now, simple commands like “Move Netflix to the Fire TV” when changing between rooms don’t work; all those woes are history, it seems.
5. Improvements to Routines
Along a similar vein, Amazon has announced some much, much needed features for Alexa Plus when it comes to automations. Alexa Routines are a great starting position for newbies and those with minimal devices, but they rely heavily on the phone interface and offer little customization or conditional programming.
Now, Amazon says Alexa Plus will not only allow you to create new Routines by voice, but the blog posts suggest you’ll be able to build in conditional logic. For instance, if you’re going on holiday for the week and need the lights to turn on at varying intervals to make it look like you’re home, you can tell Alexa Plus, and it will deliver. You can even ask for daily outfit recommendations based on the weather, which I’ll be using almost every day, so I stop sweating from stupidly wearing a heavy coat when it’s actually moderately warm outside.
These can also be personalized to a specific user, thanks to Vision ID and voice recognition technology.
6. Household management
Thanks to a litany of third-party service integrations, Alexa Plus looks fit to take on some of the best AI assistants by offering agentic capabilities.
Whether that’s by booking a restaurant reservation, ordering a cab for a family member, or scheduling an appointment for household repairs, these hands-free interactions could free up hours of time spent on life admin.
That’s especially true for the grocery shopping feature, which is compatible with Amazon Fresh and other grocery delivery services. This feature won’t be ready at release but will be sometime in the future. You’ll be able to list everything from full recipes to scenarios like “We’ve got two guests coming on Friday, and one is a vegetarian,” following which Alexa will populate a shopping basket with your preferred retailer.
7. Image analysis
This isn’t something I’d asked for, but I’m really excited to see how it pans out for Alexa Plus; the cameras built into your Echo Show devices just got a whole lot more useful thanks to its image analysis abilities.
If, for example, a plant in your home is wilting and you can’t figure out why, you can ask Alexa Plus to identify the plant, research it, and give suggestions for its care. Pretty neat.
There’s plenty more coming to Alexa Plus to make it an exciting proposition, though its $19.99 monthly subscription fee (which, as a reminder, is more expensive than the $14.99 monthly Amazon Prime membership, which will include Alexa Plus…) does feel disproportionate nonetheless.
There are also some features inexplicably rolling out as Alexa Plus exclusive, where I see no reason for them not to be on the standard, free tier. For instance, the ability to send announcements to specific devices does not feel like something that necessitates AI and is something people have been asking for for a long time. The same goes for moving media from room to room. It should just work.
While Amazon, I’m sure, is keen to recoup some of its $25bn smart home losses, feature-stuffing a subscription plan just isn’t the way to engender long-term users to step up to a new subscription, nor do these small quality-of-life fixes really serve to add much value to this curiously positioned subscription service.
A better message would be that “Alexa is better for everyone, but if you want the version that can really make your life better, then there’s Alexa Plus.”
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josephine.watson@futurenet.com (Josephine Watson)
