A toy that came one year late: Amazon Echo Dot!! We were gonna buy it for Christmas last year but it wouldn’t arrive in time before Christmas, so we cancelled the order. And then we just forgot about it and never made another order. Now it’s on offer again, and we finally bought it. Should have bought it a long time ago!

First of all, I play music at home all day, I mean like all day, this is a cool voice-controlled speaker. I can tell Alexa to play any song anytime, or play what kind of playlist, ask her to turn the volume up or down, ask her to stop, and I don’t need to use my hands at all in any of these. 

And, I’m in the kitchen making food most of the time, I can ask Alexa to set me a timer while I cook, rather than having to wash my hands, wipe them dry, and then grab my iPhone to set a timer. 

I have a habit of making shopping lists. I use iPhone notes to put down what I need to buy whenever it comes to my mind, so I don’t forget anything when I go shopping. Now I can tell Alexa to add stuff to my shopping list, I can ask her ‘what’s on my shopping list’ anytime, she’ll tell me everything that’s on my list. 

Or, if we want to know something, we always just use our iPhones to search on Google. Like last night at dinner, we were talking about the most expensive wine in the world, we asked Alexa precisely that. Instantly she said the most expensive wine was in Canada, it was selling for how much in Canadian dollars. So we asked, ‘Alexa, how much is that in British pounds?’ And Alexa did the conversion for us. There’s no need to be tapping on our phones at dinner anymore. 

And then we asked Alexa what’s on Film4 tonight, instantly Alexa said, it’s this film at 9pm, this film at 11pm, and then next film at what time, it’s really cool!

While it’s still new and we’re so excited before he leaves home in the morning, he’ll ask Alexa what time is it when he’s putting on his shoes, so he knows how he’s doing with train times. I tell Alexa to put on some morning music first thing in the morning. There’re still lots of functions we haven’t tried, it’s a lot of fun! 

I wasn’t sure before we bought it as it seemed like a lot of the functions are already on our phones, like if I want to ask something I can ask Siri (but I never do). But Alexa is just completely different and much better than Siri. 

I think the coolest thing is it only costs £29.99 to get one (with Amazon promotion).

p.s. This is me writing 2 days after Alexa arrived. The excitement will probably go away after a week or so, so I have to write these down now while it’s all exciting and fresh!