Amazon Echo Club

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

That's not new.

It is according to Amazon. It's on their "What's new?" page.

Originally Posted by wodin

My iMCO CoWatch - Alexa-Enabled SmartWatch arrived yesterday and initial impressions are four (out of 5) stars. It was a bit fiddly to get set up (more on that later), and the notifications are a little uh... unreliable. But I really like the UI, it's what Android Wear should have been. And Alexa works, and answers come right on the watch through the built in speaker.

A more in depth review will come later, after I've used it for a few days to get better acquainted.

Seriously, it is a PITA to set up and the notifications are unreliable, but you still give it a 4 star rating?

[wodin]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Seriously, it is a PITA to set up and the notifications are unreliable, but you still give it a 4 star rating?

So don't buy one Jack, but don't mock me because I like mine.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

It is according to Amazon. It's on their "What's new?" page.

They must have had a slow week in development.

[wodin]

Yeah, that seems to be common over at Jeff's house.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by wodin

So don't buy one Jack, but don't mock me because I like mine.

I'm not going to mock you, but what is it that you like so much about it?

[wodin]

Thanks PL, originally I bought because it's Alexa enabled but after using it for a day now I realize that the user interface is it's best feature even though Alexa works quite well also. The watch face has three icons (they call them "containers") on it that you can tap to bring up the associated app, if you swipe left or right you get three more and so on for fifteen different apps. It's like pages on an Android phone. It's just so intuitive that it's amazing that Google didn't use it for Android Wear.

As an early adopter I took a chance and found that no matter how much I like it, I was perhaps a bit premature. They need to sort out the BlueTooth interface better. I had to fiddle with it last night to get it to pair, and today it lost it's connection so when I have time I'll need to do more fiddling.

I would not recommend buying one quite yet, but when (fingers crossed) they get the interface sorted out it'll be killer.

Did I mention that it's gorgeous?

[Yolina]

Today is release day for the Echo in the UK, waiting for mine to be delivered

[ApK]

Originally Posted by wodin

They need to sort out the BlueTooth interface better. I had to fiddle with it last night to get it to pair, and today it lost it's connection so when I have time I'll need to do more fiddling.

Odd, that seems like one wheel that wouldn't need reinventing.

I have several devices, even very cheap ones, where the only user interface is "it's on or it it isn't" and even they manage BT pairing and connections reasonably well. Having a touch display available should make it no-brainer.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Yolina

Today is release day for the Echo in the UK, waiting for mine to be delivered

You'll love it! I use mine every day. It's my favorite gadget!

[wodin]

Originally Posted by ApK

Odd, that seems like one wheel that wouldn't need reinventing.

I have several devices, even very cheap ones, where the only user interface is "it's on or it it isn't" and even they manage BT pairing and connections reasonably well. Having a touch display available should make it no-brainer.

Well yes, that seems to be a casualty of friendly fire. I had forgotten the face of my Father, and the Prime Directive of all repairers of computers. Which is to say when in doubt, reboot.

When I was initially setting up the CoWatch, I was interrupted during the pairing process and had to start over. 'Twould seem that I had inadvertently introduced some bogus settings in my phone causing some instability in the BlueTooth stack.

When I got home from work yesterday and began fiddling, one of my fiddles was to reboot my phone; and wallah! The watch connected up and began running normally. The notifications started working properly too, in fact a bit too properly. Da buggah was viberating about every ninety seconds. I had to block a few of the who gives a s**t notification to just get the thing to quit buzzing.

A bit about the battery; CoWatch advertises a 32 hour battery life, but after fifteen hours yesterday it was down to 20%. Granted, yesterday was not typical use but it wouldn’t seem that the thing will make a day and a half. As long as it lasts a day that’s OK, I’m used to charging up every night anyway, but that brings up another issue. When I put it on the charger last night, I got it backwards, so it wasn’t charging, and I woke up this morning to a dead watch. My Android Wear watches change the face to show the state of charge when they’re on the cradle, the CoWatch does not. That’s not a deal breaker, but it is a feature request for some future software upgrade.

All in all, I’d still give it four stars, but that went from rounding up from three and a half to rounding down from four and a half.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

You'll love it! I use mine every day. It's my favorite gadget!

You don't need an Echo to use Alexa on a CoWatch, it's a self contained Alexa portal. It's not so good at playing music though, and I haven't tried to get it to read a book to me; but if it can it better be in a very quiet room.

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

You'll love it! I use mine every day. It's my favorite gadget!

So far so good rather liking it. I can see the the shopping list/ to do list/ calendar coming in handy and getting used *a lot*. Now I need to look into getting it set up to work with my Hue lights...

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Yolina

So far so good rather liking it. I can see the the shopping list/ to do list/ calendar coming in handy and getting used *a lot*. Now I need to look into getting it set up to work with my Hue lights...

We use it to control our bedroom lights. It's a lazy person's dream come true.

I'd like to see integration between the Alexa shopping list and some of the more popular and/or useful shopping list apps, like Paprika. Perhaps between the skills kit and IFTTT, I should stop wishing and start coding, but, you know, lazy.

ApK

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by ApK

We use it to control our bedroom lights. It's a lazy person's dream come true.

The fact that it works with Hue is pretty much what convinced me I needed to get one

I'd like to see integration between the Alexa shopping list and some of the more popular and/or useful shopping list apps, like Paprika.

I don't use shopping list apps, so the simple equivalent of pen and paper is fine for me but I'd like to be able to have several separate lists