Amazon EchoThe Echo line is Amazon’s toe in to the new world of AI robotic brains. However, a lot of people are still confused about what is the Echo Dot vs Echo. How are they different? And which one should I get? Amazon Echo sits on a table, has no arms or legs, but commands a world of things around you thanks to the expanding internet of things (IoT). CNET.com compared it to the development of the automobile, saying,
“The smart home of tomorrow just found its model T.”
On the surface, Amazon Echo is a 9 inch full-range speaker (large enough to make significant bass sound) in a cylindrical housing. It plays streamed music from internet sites like Pandora, Spotify, Prime, and more. You invoke it from its sleeping state by calling “Alexa.” It feels like you are calling forth a genie. You just command it like a smart phone. Say, “play Pandora,” and it goes to your account and music streams through.
Echo is a command center for whatever you have that is connected, a smart, lively, lifelike controller for your entire home. This of course implies that you have your home connected to the IoT. The more smart things you have connected, the more useful Echo becomes. It promises, potentially, that you can virtually run your life without leaving your chair.
When you boil it down, Echo is a stand-alone smartphone search system, without the screen. It is on the edge of the evolution of the user interface. What used to be the graphical user interface (GUI) has outgrown the graphical part. Echo is connected to Amazon’s Alexa system in the cloud. It has Alexa’s competent female assistant voice. It can answer virtually any question using its fast internet search. To arm Echo and Echo Dot, you download the Alexa App that includes connections to common pizza delivery, Fitbit monitors, Uber, and certain banks.Machine learning continually focusses its competence. It gradually learns to recognize your speech, voice, preferences and vocabulary.
Third-party voice apps are called “skills” in the new parlance. There are over 3,000 of them at present, and each one teaches Alexa a new trick. Skills include games like “The Wayne Investigation” that lets you talk your way through an interactive mystery. The idea of a spoken game is certainly something new in the technical culture.
Comparing Echo Dot vs Echo, you find that Echo Dot is essentially Echo’s modernized and miniaturized version. It has all the brains of Echo, but a significantly smaller speaker (comparable to most of the blue tooth speakers on the market). To compensate, for audiofils, Echo Dot includes a standard earphone jack to connect with your sound system. It also has Bluetooth connectivity to connect with any Bluetooth speaker. The one limitation is that Echo Dot fails to include a system for syncing audio across multiple devices in multiple rooms.
- Critics say that the ability of Echo Dot to hear you command it from across the room is improved over Echo’s.
- Echo Dot has a 3.5 inch phone jack to make up for the reduced speaker size. Echo has no jacks.
- Echo Dot has an ESP feature that controls the contact with multiple devices by voice. Echo does not have this.
- Echo is much more portable than Echo.
- At the time this article was written, Echo Dot vs Echo prices were significantly different, at $50 for Dot versus $180 for the big brother.
Virtually all commentators agree comparing Echo Dot vs Echo, the Dot is a much better buy than its older, larger cousin. The Echo Dot is clearly the second generation of the software, made and priced for widespread use it and its offspring promise to be at the core of the growing internet of things and artificial intelligence culture. The second generation Alexa system sold out more quickly than anyone anticipated. Echo Dot launched just a little less than one year ago, in March, 2016. It soon went out of stock as it was grabbed up by consumers. The goal was to flood the market before its competition from Google and Apple’s Siri-powered smart home phone speaker (which has built-in cameras).
