Thanks to the low prices you can usually find during sales events such as Prime Day, I have multiple Amazon Echo smart speakers all around my home. After years of ownership, I’m finally making the decision to get rid of them for good and replace them with something else. Here’s why.
7
I Only Use My Echo Smart Speakers for One Thing
Echo smart speakers have the potential to do a lot of things. You can ask them questions, you can use them to control your smart home devices, you can have them tell you the latest news, track your Amazon purchases, run timers, display your photos, communicate with other rooms in the house, and much more.
All of this makes it sound like the most useful device of all time. I have multiple Echo devices around my home since Amazon priced them so well that it seemed like a no-brainer to have one in most rooms.
However, the reality is that I almost never use any of the features I just mentioned. It turns out that science fiction lied to us; using voice isn’t the most convenient way to interact with technology. In fact, it often feels really awkward. I can do many of those things from my phone without having to speak aloud, and I much prefer it that way.
There’s only one thing that I use my Echo devices for on a regular basis, and that’s playing music from my streaming service of choice. Asking Alexa to play music is quick and easy and is more convenient than pulling out my phone, finding something to play, and then playing it through a connected speaker. This alone isn’t enough to make me want to keep my Echo devices, however.
6
The Sound Quality Isn’t Great
One of the reasons why playing music isn’t enough to persuade me to keep all my Echo devices is that the sound quality just isn’t that great. The sound quality of my older Echo Dots is definitely nothing to write home about. My Echo Show 5 devices are arguably even worse, and I have these in the rooms I use the most, such as my office, the kitchen, and the living room.
It doesn’t have to be this way, however. If all I’m doing is asking my speaker to play music by voice, then there are plenty of better options available.
The thing is, I don’t need an Echo device at all. For example, the newer voice-enabled Sonos speakers can be controlled via voice without using third-party voice assistants such as Alexa. I can get exactly the same voice control that I’m getting from my Echo smart speakers, but with the vastly superior sound quality that Sonos speakers can offer.
Admittedly, the speakers are more expensive than Echo devices, but you get what you pay for.
5
Echo Smart Speakers Haven’t Got Any Smarter
This is one of the most frustrating things I’ve found with Echo smart speakers. The first Amazon Echo was released all the way back in 2014, and yet more than a decade later, the current Echo smart speakers offer mostly the same features that the original model did. The hardware has improved, but there’s been very little change in what you can ask Alexa to do.
I regularly get emails from Amazon with titles such as “Keep up with Alexa” that list all the incredible things that Alexa can do, and there is never anything new. The most recent email I got genuinely started by suggesting I try saying “Alexa, good morning” which is a feature that has been around since 2017. I keep hoping for some new and exciting way to use Alexa, and I’m always disappointed.
After years of remaining the same, Alexa is finally about to get a major update, empowering it with AI-powered smarts. However, this new Alexa isn’t going to come for free.
4
Alexa+ Took an Age to Arrive (and Requires a Subscription)
ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots have been around for some time, and they soon made Alexa feel seriously outdated. The responses you can currently get from Alexa are embarrassingly poor compared to the responses that chatbots such as Gemini and ChatGPT can give. Amazon has been slow to catch up.
All the way back in September 2023, Amazon announced that an updated version of Alexa was on the way, powered by a large language model (LLM) that would help to give Alexa similar AI capabilities to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.
The demonstrations were promising, with Alexa+ seemingly able to better understand the context of requests and offer far more conversational responses. Alexa was also able to complete multiple requests from a single prompt.
It was also announced that eventually, it would be possible to create complex Alexa routines just by asking Alexa. For example, you could ask Alexa to open the blinds, play your morning playlist, and turn on the coffee machine, every weekday morning at 7 am. Alexa would then be able to create the routine for you.
However, it’s only after more than a year that Alexa Plus is ready. The new version of Alexa is finally due to be released, but with a significant catch. To access the upgraded Alexa, you’ll need to pay a subscription fee or have an Amazon Prime subscription.
While the new version of Alexa does look much more capable, many of the same issues still exist. For example, you can ask Alexa if anyone has taken the dog for a walk that day and Alexa will check footage from your security cameras. The rub is that you can only do this with Ring cameras, a brand owned by—you guessed it—Amazon. It also means that you have to give Amazon access to the feed from cameras within your home, which is something I really don’t want to do.
3
Integration With Home Assistant Is Poor
For many people, Alexa is a simple and effective way to control their smart home devices. It’s possible to control numerous smart home devices through Alexa, either natively or via dedicated Alexa Skills that allow you to connect your smart home devices to the Alexa ecosystem. Being able to ask Alexa to turn on your lights is a nice feature, although as mentioned above, voice control is something that I rarely use.
However, while Alexa can be useful for controlling your smart home devices, it’s far from perfect when it comes to smart home automation. You can create routines that are triggered by your smart home devices, such as having Alexa announce that someone is home when your smart lock is unlocked. You don’t have a huge amount of control since you can only create fairly simple automations.
I use Home Assistant to control my smart home. It’s open-source home automation software that can connect with an impressive number of smart home devices. It doesn’t matter whether a device is Alexa-compatible, or Google-compatible, or HomeKit-compatible; Home Assistant can usually connect to them all, meaning you can build automations that utilize all of your smart home devices, no matter the brand or ecosystem.
For the Home Assistant user, integration with Echo devices isn’t great. I can create devices in Home Assistant that I can expose to Alexa, and control with my voice, so I can ask Alexa to turn on lights even if they’re not natively compatible with Alexa. I can even get Alexa to give voice announcements triggered by events in Home Assistant.
There are significant issues, however. To connect to Alexa via Home Assistant Cloud, which is the simplest method, you need to pay a monthly subscription. You can connect them manually, but the process is far more complicated.
Additionally, Alexa relies on the cloud. If the internet goes down, you’re not able to use Alexa to control your devices in Home Assistant. Even if you use Home Assistant to control devices locally, you won’t be able to use Alexa for voice commands while there’s no internet connection.
2
I Don’t Trust Amazon With My Data
This is a big reason for wanting to get rid of the Echo devices in my home. Almost everything I say to my Alexa devices, and probably a lot that’s not intended for it to hear, gets sent to Amazon’s servers to be processed. The same applies to everything that my kids ask Alexa, and it’s far from ideal.
In fact, in 2019, it was revealed that Amazon was employing thousands of people to listen to those voice recordings and then transcribe and annotate them. That means that anything you’ve said to an Echo device may have been read by a total stranger working on Amazon’s behalf, including potentially sensitive information such as information that could be used to identify, or even your bank details.
Amazon is hardly the most trustworthy company when it comes to personal data. The company is still appealing an $886 million fine for allegedly breaking the European Union’s data protection laws. Regardless of the outcome, I’m not particularly keen to let Amazon continue to record and store the things that I say in my own home.
1
I Want a Local Voice Assistant
It doesn’t have to be this way. You should be able to get the vast majority of the benefits of a voice assistant such as an Alexa smart speaker without having to compromise your privacy.
Thankfully, we’re beginning to get to the point where you can throw out your Echo devices without having to lose all the best features. It’s possible to build or buy smart speakers that can run locally, so that what you say to them never leaves your home at all.
Many people in the Home Assistant community have built their own rough and ready smart speakers that run locally, and Home Assistant has now released a preview version of its own smart speaker that gives you the option to process voice commands locally or in the cloud. It’s not yet the perfect solution, but it’s getting to the point where I’m ready to throw Jeff Bezos out of my home.
Amazon Echo devices felt like they had the potential to change the way we interact with our technology, but years of stagnation have meant that they never really lived up to the early promise. Even with an AI-powered Alexa, they’re simply not the devices I hoped they could be.
I’ll start by kicking my Echo Show out of the living room and replacing it with my Sonos speaker for hands-free music, although this will still have the same issues of voice commands being processed in the cloud. The next step will be to try out the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition, which has a 3.5mm audio output so that I can connect it to my own speakers.
