5 Reasons You Need An Amazon Echo Dot In Your Home
Our house is big on music. By day I am a Music PR and my husband Steve has a music design background, now freelancing working with a lot of music clients. We have loads of music inspired artwork in our house (many of which have been designed by Steve), we love listening to music all the time and when we're not at home, we enjoy going to gigs and festivals.
So, when I was asked if I'd like to try out Amazon's Echo Dot, I very excitedly said yes. The more compact version of the Amazon Alexa, the Echo Dot is a neat little device which is also referred to as Alexa. I chose the white version and we've had a lot of fun playing with it since it's arrived.
A few of my friend's have the full sized Alexa and love it but I have to say, I was sceptical as to how much I'd use such a device. Until I got the Echo Dot and I can safely say, I now use it every day! I thought I'd give you the lowdown on what I think makes the Amazon Echo Dot so good. And why you need one in your lives!
1. THERE IS A LOT OF FUN TO BE HAD WITH YOUR NEW FRIEND ALEXA
So, what does Alexa do you might ask? Well, a lot of things, actually and are some of the fun things I've discovered -
Sing. Firstly, she could only sing Old Lang's Syne (which was comical at first but after a handful of times, began to wear a bit thin!) but recently she appears to have created her own little song and is very excited to share it with me when I ask her to.
- Tell jokes. They're actually quite funny and I may or may not have stolen a few of them for the joke bank.
- Talks about herself. You can ask her what she's wearing, what hair colour she has, what she looks like, who her brother and sisters are... sometimes she doesn't know what to say but it's fun thinking what to ask her about herself!
- Make you more knowledgable. You can ask Alexa most general knowledge questions and she knows the answer. You can also ask her random things like how old a particular pop star is or the middle name of a certain actress.
2. WELCOME TO YOUR NEW MUSIC SYSTEM
One of the best things about the Echo Dot is that you can link it to your streaming platform of choice and listen to your music library. We use Spotify and it's great being able to think about who you want to listen to and ask Alexa to play it without having to scroll through and find the artist and track you want in the middle of cooking or at a dinner party.
It's also able to switch between streaming and radio stations, using TuneIn, and I like that I can easily listen to what I want when I want. The sound isn't the best you'll ever hear but it's good enough.
3. IT'S A STYLISH AND COMPACT DEVICE
The Echo Dot is very aesthetically pleasing and it's small enough to fit into most places in your home. You can easily put it onto a side table or hide it amongst home accessories on a shelf and it's hardly noticeable. It's a cool circular design and is light and easy to transport from room to room around your house, as I regularly do! It comes in white or black but I went for the white version.
4. ALEXA CAN PLAN YOUR DAY
Want to know when the next train is leaving your local station? Alexa can tell you. Do you want to plan the day but need to know what the weather is like? Alexa can give you an overview. She's very handy like that.
5. ALEXA IS THE ULTIMATE COMPANION WHEN YOU'RE FEELING LAZY
All of the above make Alexa a perfect companion for when you're feeling lazy. She can even call friends and family for you, as long as they have the Alexa app on their phones. Treat her well though - she can wish you a good morning and say goodnight!
*This post was in collaboration with Amazon and a big thanks to their PR team for gifting me an Amazon Echo Dot for this post.
