I saw this hilarious 2 star rating on Amazon for their Children's Echo and Echo Glow combination:
Quote:
Bill B.
2.0 out of 5 stars Not ready for prime time
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2019
Configuration: Device onlyColor: Kids RainbowVerified Purchase
This is the epitome of a good idea marred by poor execution. A lot of the stock skills (Disney Stories, for instance, which is a large part of why I bought the thing) are clunky or glitchy, and have tons of bugs. It doesn't handle errors gracefully- and leaves me in the position of trying to explain a software bug to a 4 year old who doesn't understand and just wants a Puppy Dog Pals story before bed.
I can't switch profiles and use FreeTime with another profile. The end result is that every time my kids ask it to play music, it cuts off my Spotify, which is hindering my ability to listen at work. On top of that, if they don't specify the song, it has some pretty weird choices for kids' music- most notable recently is "Emotion" by the Bee Gees.
It's as strict as a regular Alexa at interpreting commands- "Read me Disney Stories" gets you the Disney Stories skill, but "Read me a Disney story" gets you the Disney Wikipedia entry read to you- and this isn't really ideal for children.
Perhaps worst of all, the parental controls over skills is pretty spotty. For instance, it lets my kids control our Nest thermostat even in FreeTime, which is unfortunate because I accidentally let them overhear me doing it recently and all it took was one time hearing the command for them to start messing with the temperature. It lets them control our Master Bedroom lights from their room. It also lets them randomly drop in on other Echoes- awkward when Mommy and Daddy are enjoying some "alone time" or when Great Grandma can't figure out why she can hear them coming from her device.
And you don't even want to hear about the time the trigger word was randomly changed on its own. That took thirty agonizing minutes of crying toddler tantrum to figure out (and I suspect I got it faster than most- I do software troubleshooting for a living!)
Honestly, the best I can say is that the year of FreeTime that comes with it is nice- but in the end I wish I had not bought it. Now getting rid of it would feel like a punishment to them, so the tranquility of my home for the foreseeable future is at the dubious mercy of underpaid and overworked Amazon developers...
Alexa, play Despacito.
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Amazon Echo's AI (Artificial Ignorance) strikes again. Ummm, don’t the programmers have to be at least somewhat intelligent to create so-called "Artificial Intelligence"?
BTW, I loved the part about mommy and daddy's adult playtime being piped to the kids room.
Traumatize the kids...and entertain the jerks at Amazon who review the recordings....