Quote:
Originally Posted by Alohamora
This is the most interesting of the new devices to me. My car has Car play and Android Auto support built in, but both have fallen short on doing what I want them to do. If Alexa's voice recognition can get along with me, this might work better for me.
I don't feel any compelling need to talk to my gadgets at home, but voice control that actually works in the car, now that would be a dream come true.
My biggest concern though is what happens when you loose cell signal? Does it become useless?
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Hey you! Flip flop much?
I wrote the above post back in September and have changed my mind. I'll be moving in a couple of weeks, so I decided to go for smart lighting in the new place. I'll have a shorter commute so doing anything more complicated for in-car audio is less compelling.
I bought a couple of 3rd gen dots and smart switches on BF. I tested the new dot and while music sounds fine, the voice is muddy. I asked Alexa for jokes and mostly couldn't understand the punch lines due to muffled sound.
Dot 2 was still at the sale price at that point, so I got a couple of those with cheap smart bulb kits. Much better clarity, but also far weaker music. So I'll keep both generations of Dots. I've got a placement strategy in mind that may work out.
What's very interesting is Alexa's TTS reading of Kindle books seems to be pretty good. Is anyone using it regularly? I keep dabbling with TTS hoping to find something workable.
Alexa herself seems much more capable, less "I'm not sure", than when I experimented with the app on a Fire tablet in the past.
I wonder how long Amazon will go on producing Dot gen 2s? There certainly seemed to be a plentiful supply of them at Black Friday pricing.