Alexa+ manages to answer quickly, even when listening to a more complex question and giving a more complex answer. She usually manages to answer all of my questions, too—no more of the “Hmm, I’m not quite sure how to answer that” that I’ve heard one time too many from the original Alexa. She used to give me that answer to even seemingly simple questions—outfit suggestions on a cloudy day at the zoo, for example, or where we can book a table for dinner, or if Kesha has tickets on sale for her tour. Alexa+ can accurately tell me calendar details, and it controls my smart home with a much better speed than the Google speakers that have been controlling my house for the past year. I also like that I can access the conversations I’ve had in the past through the Alexa app. They’re grouped by the initial question I asked, making it easy to skim through conversations and see what Alexa’s answers were.
Alexa+ will also use the camera to recognize you and other members of the house if you set up their profiles as well. My Echo Shows will display “Good Morning, Nena” when I approach them and suggest things in the For You section on the homepage that it remembers I like to do, such as aerial arts and going to the zoo. Alexa+ has also done a good job ignoring when I casually mention her name in conversation, and while my initial thought was this was due to me not looking at the camera, my further testing found she was pretty good at ignoring her name if it was mid-sentence, even if I looked right at her.
Alexa+ is not perfect yet, nor is she complete. I encountered some hiccups—for example, when asked about the closest donut shops, she provided me with shops in the city I live in, even though I was currently in a different city. However, these issues were easily remedied by providing her with more context. Her funniest answer was when I asked for the weather at the zoo, trying to see if she’d know to reference the San Diego Zoo, and instead she gave me the weather for Zaō, Japan. But the next time I asked about the weather in San Diego proper, and then what to wear to the zoo, she correctly deduced which zoo I was talking about.
New Digs
Photograph: Nena Farrell
While I can make all the original asks I usually would with Alexa+, there are plenty of new things to try.
