Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 December 2022
I bought this, in all fairness, because I wanted a cheap little speaker for the kitchen.
Tye sound quality is ok, nothing special, the bass is lacking, and cannot find a graphic equaliser anywhere in the settings.
The logic behind what is displayed as standard in the app and what you have to go searching for, and then end up googling where it is, baffles me.
During the setup it asks you to select your preferred music streaming service, obviously Amazon prime music is the default, but in that section you can also set up pod adts and radio stations you prefer, ... however.... It only lets you select one, before the setup kicks you onto the next topic, and when you go back in, after setup is completed, you cannot find podcasts, radio or even music anywhere in the many icons, so I googled, and it is hidden behind 3 layers of other, unrelated options.
Why??
It will s first and foremost a speaker and yet anything you want to listen to is hidden away in the bowels of unrelated options??
However, once set up, favourite providers selected, all you have to do is say "Alexa...play my " insert name of music provider" + " insert name of playlist" and it does.
You can say Alexa pause music, Alex continue playing, in fact I am not sure that one is an official command, it is simply what I said, when whilst finalising where exactly in the kitchen thedpeaker would sound best and not be in the way, I accidentally pushed something that made the music stop, so in a panic I thought oops I have messed up some important setting, so blurted out Alexa, please continue playing music, and it did, so I have stuck with that command .
If you are young or have other Alexa things, this might all be second nature, but as my home set up was set up by my son, and is mainly Google, I was actually really pleased I managed to get so far, all on my own.
Things you need to know: 1: your broadband/ network password, it needs it to set up.
2: your music service, podcast service, radio service passwords, it asks for these during setup, something my Google system didn't as far as I remember.
3: it is a plug in speaker, however, Amazon sell seperately a base for it that is rechargeable, I think it is designed so that you take the speaker and the base with you outside. Personally I am waiting for that to be on sale as currently the base aline costs £20 more than the 5th gen speaker.
Problems...
It has the option of adding items to a shopping list.
I thought I would try it out on getting the Alexa 5th gen speaker to shop on Amazon, made sense to me, first so that the minimum amount of issues should arise....
I learnt the command " Alexa buy " whatever" on amazon.co UK, and it came back with the item i had previously bought, which is what I actually wanted, it told me the price and Said it had popped it in my Amazon shopping basket, it then said if I wanted to buy it now I should say " buy it now", which I did, and then it made it's little action beep sound and i pootled along. I then did it again for another item.
Later that day, I happened to be checking the delivery time for something I had bought on Amazon on my computer, and I noticed the basket showed I had two items in it.
I checked the basket and it was the two items that i had asked Alexa to" buy it now".
I checked my order history and , nope, Alexa had not bought it now, it had just popped them into the basket.
If I hadn't logged in to check a previous order, I wouldn't have received the items that I had asked Alexa to " buy it now".
So, perhaps teething issues or mayhap I should have said " Alexa... buy it now" but each time it made that little beep sound it makes when it carries out a command so I thought I had achieved my goal, that the Alexa had understood and carried out the command, so that is why I mention it here, in case anyone else has the same issues.
I have some smart home devices that, at the time of setting up this little speaker, I didn't want to get into, so skipped that bit of the setup, however....
I recently added two new devices , a smart lightbulb and another item from the same company.
During these set ups of these devices using that manufacturers app, it asked to link to my Google and my Alexa, and it went well.
The second setup was even quicker as that manufacturers app just linked all by itself after the first item, and Alexa spoke and said it had linked with this new smart home device from a completely different company, however..
It did this, when I had turned the mic off / privacy mode on ( there is a privacy button on the top of the speaker, well there are 4 buttons, all odd shapes, certainly not industry standard logos accepted for things like on/ off or up/ down.)
This is touted in the 5 th gen as the privacy button, which ensures you privacy and makes the light at the bottom of the speaker turn red, however as I mentioned, it linked and spoke to me whilst in this privacy mode.
Also, the red light changes colour all by itself if I am having a conversation with someone in the kitchen, it goes yellow, blue and back to red whilst we talk, and then settles to red again if we stop, my friend noticed it so we played a game to see if indeed it was us speaking that made the colours change, and it was, which it shouldn't, because Amazon state that with the privacy button pressed, and the speaker light is red, the microphone should be completely off, so... How did the speaker hear we were talking to change colour when we talked and go red every time we stopped???
I really only caved into buying an Alexa when they adversed the privacy features, as I really don't want anyone or anything listening in on my conversations.
Google use a secrecy, local processing ( i.e. what you say never leaves your device to be processed/ listened to elsewhere, it gets privately processed on your device only.
Amazon Alexa doesn't.
All requests go via the web, through their cloud farms, and may or may not go to various government bodies, listened to by actual people.
I don't like this.
So I popped it in a cupboard.
It only comes out and switched on when I want it on.
It is vaguely possible that there is something wrong with mine, however if you do buy one, try the " secret whispers " game my friend and I played...
1. Press tye privacy button to on, wait for the speaker to go red.
2. Wait 5 minutes just to be sure.
3. Start talking and watch the lights change.
4. Stop talking and watch it go back to red.
Repeat 3 & 4 , getting quieter and quieter until you are just whispering.
If you get the same result, i.e. the speaker colour changes in privacy mode, when you talk .. I can highly recommend the cupboard technique.
Hope some of this waffle is useful to someone.