The Echo Auto (including the new Echo Auto 2) relies totally on your smartphone in order to connect to the internet. Want to play songs? If you ask Echo Car to play a song it simply transfers the request to your smartphone and your smartphone does all the work and simply transfers the music to the Echo Car, which then sends it along to your car stereo (either via blutooth or hardwire connection [1/8" jack]). Want to get directions someplace? Ask Echo Car and it simply passes the request to your smartphone and the smartphone does all the work and the Echo Car just plays the directions/response that the phone provides. Hmmmm. So... if you need to have a smartphone, and you need to have the Alexa app on that smartphone -- why not just take out the middleman (the Echo Car) and open the Alexa app on your smartphone? If you put your smartphone in a cradle you can just as easily 'talk' to Alexa via the smartphone app to ask for music, directions, etc. The phone connects to the car stereo and everything works the same -- only FASTER than if you also have the Echo Car in the middle. With all other Echo devices Amazon offers being able to connect directly to the WiFi source of your choice (without the need for a smartphone), I just don't see why this one has to be different. The only reason I can think of is that for a car you might actually want to ask for directions to a pizza place, or gas station... and the device has to know your GPS coordinates in order to provide the best results. Instead of adding GPS capabilities to the Echo Car (which would, obviously, increase the price tag), they instead elected to criple the unit by forcing it to require the crutch of a smartphone. I know this isn't common, but in our vehicle we have a dedicated cellular WiFi router (which the kids can use to stream shows) and it would be great to have something similar to the Echo we have at home -- where you just ask it a question, and it returns an answer without the need for a smartphone. We have dedicated GPS units in our vehicle, so I simply replaced the Echo Car out for an Echo Show (with a touchscreen) and have that connect to the car's WiFi router and now everything works as expected. It's a shame that Amazon missed the mark on what could have been a must-have item in a vehicle... but they did.
Alexa call George... Alexa hang up... Alexa play blah blah song Alexa turn off the music... I have Verizon MiFi portable wifi. Alexa turn off the music... Alexa turn off the music... Alexa tell me a joke... really not that difficult.
Fully agree. Bought one last year for a road trip and it constantly was unable to connect to the internet and it quickly became a joke and tossed just like yours…
It's really strange. A company that has the whole Alexa platform couldn't build a simple bluetooth audio adaptor for cars. Glad I am not the only who had these problems. Thank you for sharing!
Happy to hear it works well for you. Part of this maybe how loud my Jeep is on the road. The other part maybe that I spend a lot of time without cell reception.
@@robovac3557 The little box called a cellphone does. And the Echo auto I was using doesn’t work to stream from a phone unless the phone is online. Regardless if the music is locally stored or not.
I think the latest echo auto solves the first reason, since it's now a small mic, and the main gubbins is hidden away near where you plug into USB for power. Reason number 2 is just that it's an Amazon Echo, and those two buttons are also present on all other echo devices. You're right that it does show that this is not a particularly car-specific product as a result, and therefore probably not optimal. Personally I find those buttons pretty useless, and I'd almost rather it had no buttons at all. I'm used to using my voice for everything with other Echo devices in my home, so hanging up by saying "Alexa, stop" is fine by me, and arguably is safer than having to push any button. Not working without connectivity is a necessary evil of the way echo devices work in general. The speech recognition is actually done in the cloud, and so requires that connectivity. The downside is that it doesn't work if your connection drops, the upside is that it means Alexa uses *much* more sophisticated voice recognition than the device itself could ever be capable of. Cars' built-in voice recognition is usually awful, precisely for this reason; they usually don't have enough compute grunt onboard to run a decent voice inference model. My Tesla is the first car I've had that comes close. My previous Ford and Toyota vehicles were both awful at this. Amazon generally does a good job here, but the price you pay is the need for internet connectivity.
I'm old school. I've got an Amazon Bluetooth noise cancelling speaker mounted on homemade overhead bracket with cb mounted to the same bracket. I'll try to post pic later. I've got music on phone that I can Bluetooth to but I just use a thumb drive with music plugged into stereo on the Jeep. I know what you mean about mounting accessories in the Jeep. Space is always the limiting factor.
Yea, I keep the factory radio in the Jeep. I just installed an Aux cable and run a Bluetooth transmitter to it. The factory radio is fine for me and the factory radio tend to walk away less often.
Buttons would be a plus definitely. But you know you can just say alexa skip, or alexa volume 5. There is a lot you can do. Could definitely use some improvements but I have one everywhere. Even use it on my boat so annoying people want to play a song, they can just tell alexa lol
Well yes I know, that is suppose to be the pint. My biggest issue, at least the version I have, is that the device refuses to work when I’m out of cell range. A big portion of my time is not in internet or cell range.
I love the echo audio I have it in my car, my mom‘s car and getting ready to put one in my sons car. I’ve had the first generation and second generation, and now I have the third generation and I love it.
How? Because I own it and used it for a few months. The Echo Auto was in the video, maybe you missed me throwing it. 🤣 Compared to what I use now the Echo Auto is much bigger.
Not sure I can agree with anything you said in this video. The device is not massive, it can be installed in many locations and easily hidden. I have one in each car and had no issue at all hiding it and it works great. Why in the world you want buttons on a hands free device.. No echo has this unless you have a 5 or larger with screen. As far as it not connecting, Its most likely an insatll issue. Depends if you are using bluetooth or a built in software like carplay, or what ever car you are driving. With all due respect this is a terrible review. Not to mention this device has often sold for less than 15 dollars on sale. Its a great hands free device especially if you have alexa home devices in the house. I can easily make calls and hang up calls with my alexa, i can open my garage door and turn on and off lights with no issue. I can play stop and change music, I can listen to any music i want anytime i want. Sure it has some connection issues from time to time but this is still Gen 1. and Gen 2 has since been released.
@@diariodefoto that’s awesome. iphone will only allow that for siri… But in that case this device wouldn’t be useful. you can do other ways with siri but its terrible.
The Echo Auto (including the new Echo Auto 2) relies totally on your smartphone in order to connect to the internet. Want to play songs? If you ask Echo Car to play a song it simply transfers the request to your smartphone and your smartphone does all the work and simply transfers the music to the Echo Car, which then sends it along to your car stereo (either via blutooth or hardwire connection [1/8" jack]). Want to get directions someplace? Ask Echo Car and it simply passes the request to your smartphone and the smartphone does all the work and the Echo Car just plays the directions/response that the phone provides. Hmmmm. So... if you need to have a smartphone, and you need to have the Alexa app on that smartphone -- why not just take out the middleman (the Echo Car) and open the Alexa app on your smartphone? If you put your smartphone in a cradle you can just as easily 'talk' to Alexa via the smartphone app to ask for music, directions, etc. The phone connects to the car stereo and everything works the same -- only FASTER than if you also have the Echo Car in the middle. With all other Echo devices Amazon offers being able to connect directly to the WiFi source of your choice (without the need for a smartphone), I just don't see why this one has to be different. The only reason I can think of is that for a car you might actually want to ask for directions to a pizza place, or gas station... and the device has to know your GPS coordinates in order to provide the best results. Instead of adding GPS capabilities to the Echo Car (which would, obviously, increase the price tag), they instead elected to criple the unit by forcing it to require the crutch of a smartphone. I know this isn't common, but in our vehicle we have a dedicated cellular WiFi router (which the kids can use to stream shows) and it would be great to have something similar to the Echo we have at home -- where you just ask it a question, and it returns an answer without the need for a smartphone. We have dedicated GPS units in our vehicle, so I simply replaced the Echo Car out for an Echo Show (with a touchscreen) and have that connect to the car's WiFi router and now everything works as expected. It's a shame that Amazon missed the mark on what could have been a must-have item in a vehicle... but they did.
Alexa call George... Alexa hang up... Alexa play blah blah song Alexa turn off the music... I have Verizon MiFi portable wifi. Alexa turn off the music... Alexa turn off the music... Alexa tell me a joke... really not that difficult.
Yea? Try it without cell service. Verizon doesn’t work everywhere….. I spend most my time in areas with little to no cell service.
Fully agree. Bought one last year for a road trip and it constantly was unable to connect to the internet and it quickly became a joke and tossed just like yours…
It's really strange. A company that has the whole Alexa platform couldn't build a simple bluetooth audio adaptor for cars. Glad I am not the only who had these problems. Thank you for sharing!
Mine works great. Use it every morning on the way to work.
Happy to hear it works well for you. Part of this maybe how loud my Jeep is on the road. The other part maybe that I spend a lot of time without cell reception.
@@EmbarkWithMarkUgh, do ya think no cell reception might be why, Sherlock?
@@robovac3557 ……. What good is wirelessly connecting my phone to my off road vehicle if it requires cell reception?
@@EmbarkWithMark Well, the millions of songs aren't stored inside that lil ol' box ya know.
@@robovac3557 The little box called a cellphone does. And the Echo auto I was using doesn’t work to stream from a phone unless the phone is online. Regardless if the music is locally stored or not.
I think the latest echo auto solves the first reason, since it's now a small mic, and the main gubbins is hidden away near where you plug into USB for power.
Reason number 2 is just that it's an Amazon Echo, and those two buttons are also present on all other echo devices. You're right that it does show that this is not a particularly car-specific product as a result, and therefore probably not optimal. Personally I find those buttons pretty useless, and I'd almost rather it had no buttons at all. I'm used to using my voice for everything with other Echo devices in my home, so hanging up by saying "Alexa, stop" is fine by me, and arguably is safer than having to push any button.
Not working without connectivity is a necessary evil of the way echo devices work in general. The speech recognition is actually done in the cloud, and so requires that connectivity. The downside is that it doesn't work if your connection drops, the upside is that it means Alexa uses *much* more sophisticated voice recognition than the device itself could ever be capable of. Cars' built-in voice recognition is usually awful, precisely for this reason; they usually don't have enough compute grunt onboard to run a decent voice inference model. My Tesla is the first car I've had that comes close. My previous Ford and Toyota vehicles were both awful at this. Amazon generally does a good job here, but the price you pay is the need for internet connectivity.
mine just connects to the wifi in my jeep and It never gives me trouble. I have never tried to use it within 10 secs of starting my jeep, though.
The issue arises when cell reception is lost. At least this generation becomes useless.
I'm old school. I've got an Amazon Bluetooth noise cancelling speaker mounted on homemade overhead bracket with cb mounted to the same bracket. I'll try to post pic later. I've got music on phone that I can Bluetooth to but I just use a thumb drive with music plugged into stereo on the Jeep. I know what you mean about mounting accessories in the Jeep. Space is always the limiting factor.
Yea, I keep the factory radio in the Jeep. I just installed an Aux cable and run a Bluetooth transmitter to it. The factory radio is fine for me and the factory radio tend to walk away less often.
Buttons would be a plus definitely. But you know you can just say alexa skip, or alexa volume 5. There is a lot you can do. Could definitely use some improvements but I have one everywhere. Even use it on my boat so annoying people want to play a song, they can just tell alexa lol
Well yes I know, that is suppose to be the pint. My biggest issue, at least the version I have, is that the device refuses to work when I’m out of cell range. A big portion of my time is not in internet or cell range.
never had a problem with mine and had it for years
I love the echo audio I have it in my car, my mom‘s car and getting ready to put one in my sons car. I’ve had the first generation and second generation, and now I have the third generation and I love it.
I didn’t see the Echo auto in this video.. about the size, where did you get that is huge? How can you review something that you don’t know???
How? Because I own it and used it for a few months. The Echo Auto was in the video, maybe you missed me throwing it. 🤣
Compared to what I use now the Echo Auto is much bigger.
Wow. When did cell phones NOT connect to the internet. All my phones for 20 or more years had internet connectivity with my cell service.
Must be nice to have never been somewhere without cell service.
Not sure I can agree with anything you said in this video. The device is not massive, it can be installed in many locations and easily hidden. I have one in each car and had no issue at all hiding it and it works great. Why in the world you want buttons on a hands free device.. No echo has this unless you have a 5 or larger with screen. As far as it not connecting, Its most likely an insatll issue. Depends if you are using bluetooth or a built in software like carplay, or what ever car you are driving. With all due respect this is a terrible review. Not to mention this device has often sold for less than 15 dollars on sale. Its a great hands free device especially if you have alexa home devices in the house. I can easily make calls and hang up calls with my alexa, i can open my garage door and turn on and off lights with no issue. I can play stop and change music, I can listen to any music i want anytime i want. Sure it has some connection issues from time to time but this is still Gen 1. and Gen 2 has since been released.
Man... you can do literally all those things just asking Alexa on your phone inside your car.
@@diariodefoto thats very true. however then you need to leave the alexa open on your phone the entire time. For the 15 i paid its worth it!!
@@ThaneR0248 Just if you're using iPhone. On Android you can set Alexa to listen when you ask for her, just like in echo devices.
@@ThaneR0248 Just if you're using iPhone. On Android you can set Alexa to listen when you ask for her, just like in echo devices.
@@diariodefoto that’s awesome. iphone will only allow that for siri… But in that case this device wouldn’t be useful. you can do other ways with siri but its terrible.
The amazon echo auto is not for dummies, smartphones aren't either, so learn how to use them before you review them.
Use the Amazon Echo without cell service and let me know how it works for you.
The buttons!!!!!!
Exactly!!!
True😂
I HIGHLY SUGGEST U DO UN-HOOK... ALEXAS NOT MADE FOR STUPIDITY