It’s been a week since I unboxed my 15-inch Echo Show and launched my new relationship with Alexa+, the smarter, more deeply engaged, and extraordinarily connected version of Alexa that Amazon launched a few months ago.
This is early access to a beta product that is a steady mix of pleasant surprises and frustrating bugs, as one might expect from a pre-release. Still, in general, Alexa+ lives up to the promise that Amazon Devices and Services’ lead, Panos Panay, showed off in February.
It’s far more conversational, willing to endlessly chat in its default, more natural, dulcet tones. It’s jokey but full of useful information, and probably remembers more of what you tell it about yourself than your best friend.
Alexa+ is still missing many features, but it has knowledge so current it might surprise you, and it’s adept at generating images, much like ChatGPT. It’s also a far more capable smart home manager, though it’s still not the smart home magician I need.
Amazon’s taking a careful approach to this Alexa+ rollout, but it’s not without momentum. They’re adding new Prime Members to the early access program every day, and, as we’ve seen on Reddit, the response has been somewhat mixed. I see value in this approach because, at any moment, you can tell Alexa+ to “send feedback” to the home office. Amazon execs and engineers are poring over every one of these reports, taking notes and making adjustments.
That’s why, while I’ve had a lot of time with Alexa+, I’m not ready to pass final judgment. Instead, what follows is a diary of my experiences and some thoughts about what’s good, what’s bad, and where I think Alexa+ might go next.
Day 1: Setup and travel log
Setting up Alexa+ doesn’t require much effort. In fact, the onboarding process with my Echo Show 15 felt no more daunting than what I experienced a decade ago with the original Echo.
There were some extra wrinkles to, I’d say, tighten the relationship between me and Alexa+. Soon after I plugged in the Echo Show, it asked me to register my face so it could recognize me when I walked nearby. I could’ve also registered the rest of my family’s faces, but they opted not to participate in my experiment.
Now, when I walk in the room, the Echo show greets me with a friendly on-screen message in that rather attractive Alexa+ script. I feel seen.
Since I’m pretty experienced at chatting with AI chatbots and the original Alexa voice assistant, I decided to dive right in with my first Alexa+ conversation and asked it for some dinner ideas.
Alexa+ didn’t hesitate, offering me a screen full of tasty options. I immediately noticed in our back-and-forth how I didn’t have to keep saying, “Alexa,” which made the conversations considerably more natural. As soon as the glowing blue light disappears from the screen, I start with “Alexa” again.
Like most chatbots, Alexa+ will kind of drone on with a complete answer, but now it’s ready to handle interruptions and conversational left turns. When I told Alexa+ which recipe I wanted, it started talking through the recipe. I interrupted and asked what I’d need to make the dish. One of the requirements was a cast-iron skillet. I lied and said I didn’t have one and asked for alternative cooking methods, and Alexa+ suggested a frying pan that could handle being placed in my oven.
Owing to its “preview” status, Alexa+ had the unfortunate habit of cutting off mid-sentence, though the chatbot seldom lost its place. Eventually, I decided that recipe wasn’t for me and asked Alexa+ to return to the original list. Sadly, I got dumped back to the home screen.
In those first few hours, I bounced around quite a bit, throwing topics and tasks at Alexa+ to see if and how it would respond.
When I asked what it knew about travel, Alexa+ immediately had some great suggestions. However, when I tried to dive into Spain, it got caught up on a response and then could not show me images of “La Piel de Toro,” even though it kept saying the images of the place should be appearing on my device. Alexa+ apologized (one of its core skills, IMHO) and acknowledged a possible technical issue.
Day 2: Streaming fun
My Echo Show 21 arrived with a few streaming options at the ready. I first chose Prime Video because, well, Amazon. Instead of using touch or the included Amazon Voice remote to navigate, I asked Alexa+ what it would recommend.
There was a long delay, and then it presented a thumbnail-packed carousel of recommendations. I noticed The Better Sister and asked Alexa+ to play the trailer, a task she could not complete.
As I noted above, this inability to complete some tasks was a recurring early access. Many of Alexa+’s features just need a little more time in the oven.
Day 3: All about you
Unlike the bare-bones Alexa offering, Alexa+ is a learning platform; in particular, it wants to learn about you. To be fair, you’ll get more out of Alexa+ by sharing more with the platform and, I guess, Amazon.
For the first time, I shared my contacts with Amazon so I could use Alexa+ to quickly contact friends, relatives, and coworkers. I also wanted to share my calendar since I knew I could super-charge Alexa+’s proactive nature if it knew my schedule. Unfortunately, the platform cannot work with an enterprise Google account, so instead, I sat with Alexa+ and told it my upcoming tasks.
This felt a lot like working with a secretary who sat with a notebook in their lap, ready to document every appointment, task, and meeting. There were missteps, and I was disappointed that Alexa+ didn’t automatically recognize when it had double-booked an appointment. Once again, when I pointed out the error, Alexa+ was apologetic and quickly removed the second booking.
Alexa+’s sometimes dicey listening capabilities were on full display when I tried to record my Delta frequent flyer number. The idea of a digital assistant remembering critical information you might unexpectedly need is a huge convenience, but in practice, it took at least four solid tries to get Alexa+ to stop interrupting and truncating my long number.
Eventually, Alexa+ got it, and now this is one of Alexa+’s core memories about me (along with the fact that I wear glasses, but more on that later). Literally – when I ask Alexa+ what it knows about me, it will, among other things, recite this number.
Day 4: A smart home start
The spectrum of Alexa+ skills and foibles is best illustrated in its smart home abilities. There have been and continue to be moments of sheer delight, but also lingering frustration.
With Alexa+, there’s probably never been a better consumer-grade smart home management system. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of smart devices Alexa+ automatically found, including my Canon AirPrint-ready printer. But it’s also a bit wonky when it comes to older hardware.
Alexa+ started its smart home integration process by kicking out the very first Amazon smart plug I ever purchased. Resetting the plug and re-discovering it fixed this issue.
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When I asked Alexa+ to identify all the smart home technology I have in my home, it balked and said it couldn’t. It also told me that it could not work with Google Home devices. That wasn’t true.
Once I learned how to jump through a few Alexa Skill hoops in the Alexa app on my iPhone, I did manage to connect all my Nest Learning Thermostats and Google Nest Web cams, including an aging Nest Outdoor camera. To be honest, I was hoping that Alexa+’s more powerful AI would just figure all this out on my behalf. It may…eventually, but as of yet, that’s not the case.
There are limits to what you can do with Alexa+ and older smart home hardware, which is why I installed a new Ring Doorbell Pro 2 so I could have a more comprehensive smart home experience.
The hardest part of the Ring setup was installing it on my front door. Integrating it with Alexa+ and the Echo Show 21 was a snap, and I quickly had a live feed of my front door and alerts whenever anyone walked by. When a mailman rang the bell, live video of the event appeared on my Echo Show screen.
Day 5: The full view
Now that I had two cameras working, I asked Alexa+ to show me my front and back door cameras on one screen. This worked, but only when I used the proper “Outdoor” camera name to describe the backyard camera. I’m hoping Alexa+ gets a bit better at using heuristics to parse a request based on context and all available options.
When I became frustrated by the overwhelming number of Ring alerts I was getting and asked Alexa+ how to fix it, it walked me through changing settings within the Ring app. What was lacking was any visual guidance, but I suspect adding screenshots is an easy fix.
I had some fun asking Alexa+ to identify Ring events, like how often dogs walked by and then how many dogs had peed on my lawn. Alexa+ did not shy away from the second request and quickly showed me a few moments where dogs “might have” peed on my lawn. It was hard to tell since some tiny pups are what I like to call ‘stealth pee-ers”. Keep in mind that this feature loses a lot of its utility if you’re not paying for Ring to capture and store video via a monthly Ring subscription.
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By far, my best Alexa+ smart home moment came when I used the AI to help me fix a long-standing smart device issue.
For years, I’ve had a Kasa lightbulb set as a backyard security light, turning on at sunset and off at sunrise. I’ve struggled with both Amazon’s Alexa app and Kasa’s native app to make it work consistently. Every day and for reasons unknown, I think, only to this smart bulb, it turns the brightness down to 5% and the light color to amber. I change it back to 100% and white, and it reverts.
So, I talked to Alexa+ about the problem, and it walked me through the process of setting up a new day and night routine, one that enforces peak brightness and my preferred color. Now, the light just works. If Alexa+ were huggable, I’d give it a squeeze.
Alexa+ has the most comprehensive knowledge of any chatbot about my smart home environment, but it still can’t recommend what I should buy next, meaning that while it knows what I have, it won’t suggest the best product for full integration, compatibility, and smart home utility.
I think that with all of Amazon’s product knowledge, the details Alexa+ has about you and your smart home gear, and this AI’s generative smarts, this is within the realm of future possibility.
Day 6: It’s generative
Alexa+ is also a capable AI chatbot (it uses Claude AI and Amazon’s Nova models), matching tasks you might typically perform with Gemini or ChatGPT.
It can use the camera to identify what I’m holding (I held up a bag of Triscuits, and it accurately identified them), and when I finally finished all the smart home setup and asked it for a picture of a cat riding a bicycle in Manhattan, it immediately complied.
I was impressed with the quality and speed, but when I wanted to mail the image to myself, a known bug prevented the image from arriving with the message.
Alexa+ is full of real-time data. Hours after Trump’s sons announced their T1 phone, I asked Alexa+ about it. It was aware and described the phone and the new Trump Mobile service. It’s like it’s reading the news right alongside me.
And when boredom creeps in, Alexa+ is willing to play a game. We chose trivia, but after one softball question about who postulated the Theory of Relativity, Alexa+ ended the game. Oh well, so much for that distraction.
Somewhere in the middle of my Alexa+ pre-release experiment, my favorite pajama bottoms tore almost in half. It’s hard to imagine a better AI-powered shopping companion than Alexa+, so I asked for a list of good PJ bottom options.
The carousel appeared, and I asked for more info about the first set. Finally, I asked if Alexa+ could alert me when the price dropped below $25 for a set of three. Naturally, the AI complied, and now I await further shopping instructions.
Day 7: It’s a Fan
With the new Alexa+, I feel confident asking it almost anything. When I brought up the NY Mets and how they are performing this year, Alexa+ regaled me with the team’s impressive record (45 wins, 27 losses). And when I asked about Pitcher David Peterson’s complete shutout game, Alexa+ sounded as excited as a true fan (I swear I didn’t imagine it).
I try to catch as many Mets games as possible, but I still miss some, so I asked Alexa+ for a summary of the last game. There was a long wait, but then I got an excellent game highlight video. I also created a routine where Alexa+ could tell me the results of a game, and then forgot about it until 10:30PM the next day when Alexa shouted to me from the other room about a Mets loss [cue me suddenly regretting that routine].
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As the week drew to a close, Alexa+ and I were getting pretty chummy. We started talking about Monday, and then Alexa asked me what I had planned. I told it I had an eye doctor appointment, and Alexa+ first said it hoped I didn’t need glasses (I told it I already wore them) and then made a lame dad joke.
I chuckled a bit but wondered about Alexa+’s default, lighthearted nature. In most cases, it serves the AI well, but in this instance, the context of a doctor’s visit, perhaps a more serious or at least straightforward approach would have been more appropriate.
For now, there’s no way to adjust Alexa+’s dad-joke-leaning demeanor, but considering how sycophantic some AI’s can be and Alexa+’s lack of situational awareness, I think such a setting is in order.
Alexa+ is not fully baked, but it’s clear that this version bears little relation to the decade-old predecessor. It’s a full AI that, unlike most on the market, starts off with extensive awareness of you and your connected devices.
It’s understanding of that environment, still doesn’t make your smart home feel like a cohesive encosystem, but the tendrils are there and, as Amazon keeps improving Alexa+ and prepares for a global release (surely just weeks away), it will draw those threads together and make something we havent seen before, an operational AI Smart Home.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
