So this is basically an Echo with a Hue bridge built in?

Just watched the video, pillow forts need Hue light strips now? FML.

Better off waiting for Black Friday

Didn't even realise that my ordinary echo didn't do this

Hope the sound quality's going to be better than the original!

got a echo dot i hardly use it.. i have hue i hate the way the home hub needs to be plugged in via rj45. i have been thinking about getting smart plugs i can control from phone or with automation...

if this is the centerpiece of my smart home i think it's a good idea tho i doubt i would actually use the voice control much

i hate my echo dots now. i bought five of them, i could play different music on all of them in any room. ok it would occasionally say that the song I want to listen to isn't available without purchasing amazon music too... about two to three weeks ago they changed everything. They introduced groups so you can play the same song on multiple dots but now you need to purchase an amazon music subscription to play on more than one dot at the same time. So now our five dots are almost useless as we can only use one of them at a time to play music.

Apparently this was in the T&Cs from the start, but they never enforced it.... until now. So now I feel like it's a bit of a waste, they get you in then jack up the prices.

The google home is much better. I own one google home and five dots and I have to say that the google one is way better. Alexa fans will say ah but amazon has a bazillion skills and google has only a few... true... but 99% of the alexa skills i don't need / use anyway. But the big thing for me is, my kids ask it random questions. Most of the time, Alexa says "Hmmmm... I'm sorry I don't know that" but doesn't bother to look it up. If google home doesn't know.... it googles it and gives you the top answer which is much more useful than "hmm.....Im connected to Bing... but I don't use it for anything"...

Interesting move from Amazon, just bought a load of Hue stuff too. The limitation of Hue is of course not all light fixtures are suitable for bulbs, for some you need relays, smart sockets etc. Combining a couple of those hubs into echo itself could be very useful, and Amazon is big enough to knock their heads together to make sure they work properly. Could be pretty good for most, though I suspect it will be nowhere near the range of devices and automation achievable with the smartthings hub itself (and I see no mention of zwave, only zigbee LL and HA by the looks of it).

Just a shame I am into Google home, which is just far ahead with its knowledge graph. My young son uses it more than I do...

My hue is sitting unused, the tech just isn't there yet and the limited selection of bulb types is a major restriction, so having bought the starter kit I'm not keen on spending another 60 on light switches when I can only use it in 3 lights not the whole house. This is a step in the right direction, all these bridges etc is getting silly. But it's not enough for me to upgrade.

Agree the enforcing of being able to play prime music on only one item is pants. I think the improvements in Prime have stalled and we're going backwards a bit. And I've noticed I'm paying extra for a lot of prime items now compared to none prime.

If the hub in this has more memory than the Hue Hub 2 it will be worth buying. Especially if you are deep into the Hue eco system. Otherwise you’d be better with an Echo normal and pick up a used Hue Hub 2.

I'll stick with my echo and 3 dots, Energenie hub. Sound on echo is loud enough for us.

Just hope they don't tamper with echo v1 firmware making it unusable and forcing to upgrade, could happen

I read the “TLDR; I disagree” as “in short, daskapital disagrees that this is a hot deal”. Not, “I, powerbrick, disagree with daskapital’s post”.

In theory this should work with the much cheaper Ikea Tradfri bulbs.

Seems ideal for people just getting into the whole Smart Home thing.

most people with an interest though will surelyalready have a Hue Bridge or similar.

I don't understand why everyone is so obsessed with controlling lights via voice? Light switches work REALLY well, almost never fail and don't require you to by stupid expensive lightbulbs.

So if I get an echo plus with built in home hub then a regular echo dot downstairs can the dot control the hue bulb in a relay by communicating with the echo plus? Do I have this right?

Okay why buy this over the echo dot? If the only reason is the speaker then I'd rather use my soundbar or something
What does the 'Plus' add?

Have owned an echo since the very first pre-order deal was available at £100 for prime members.

It's great but a tad gimmicky really. It mainly functions as a voice activated light switch in our bedroom to turn on/off the HUE lights.

Other than that I do set wake up alarms on it which interestingly, don't always go off at the correct time (have known them to go off as late as 30 minutes very occasionally)

The only other function I use is to ask her what the current time is in various countries as I work with offices dotted all round the globe and am too lazy to try remembering which time zone any given country is in.

She also likes to interrupt me watching movies by picking up a bit of dialogue and then trying to reel off an entire Wikipedia page about the subject she thinks she's heard at which point I tell her to STFU... :neutral_face:‌ :joy:

I am gutted as I have just bought the original echo last week :-(
Is their much difference in the OG and the New Generation ?

We have an echo and 4 dots...we use them all the time....Reminders, alarms, radio, weather, Story books....shopping list...Works fantastic with our Hue set up and Hive heating...I’m not sure how I managed before lol...the family has to buy into it though or it will be a paper weight.

Now voice calling and “ intercom “ are been switch on....no more shouting round the house for the kids...

build in smart home means i dont need and additional hub to start using smart compatable things?

forgive my ignorance. with an echoplus (inc bulb) am i right in saying you just plug the bulb in and it will 'turn on lights' ? and secondly, if you buy further bulbs for other rooms these too will just work?

can anyone get the drop-in function working today? I thought it was enabled for the UK now

I use a TP-LINK smart bulb with my Echo - no hub required (and no new Echo needed either). Very simple setup too. Bubl cost £24.99.

Or if you have a raspberry pi you can emulate the hue bridge! Might save you money rather than buying one with a built in hub!

Ah. to be fair I don't think I can say with certainty that I have tried to stream amazon music independently but simultaneously.
I know I can stream same to all , and I know I have definitely streamed music to one and played radio on the other... I will be testing tonight.

super thanks! new kitchen being fitted so sounds like i can just have standard light fittings buy the echoplus and be done with it. cheers.

Wait, isn't this just RRP? Why is this a hot deal?
Something that goes on sale for £139 is being sold at £139? How is this novel?

No...app is not updated yet...the stetting is in there....

COME ON AMAZON GET IT SORTED!! This item does not ship to UK - Northern Ireland - IN THIS DAY IN AGE!!

FWIW IDGAS

Me too, we bought 2. Should have guessed something was coming with the drop in price

What is genuinely better: the "All-New Amazon Echo" or "All-New Echo Plus"? I don't know the difference. I'm an Echo noob.

You could of just used it as a blutooth speaker - its a powerful speaker for like £100. It's basically a speaker with the ability to connect to other stuff and make your house a smart home. Surely you knew what you were buying before you jumped in and spent the cash right? ^_^

Mine gives that message too but then gives the option if I want to stream on this device and if I say yes it starts playback without interrupting the other echo...

i waiting for uk to have voice training and too finally be able to control fire stick anf i wish there was a skill called ask Google

I was just about report that testing shows that I cannot do it because of the message. But just read your post and tried anyway and I have 90's containing downstairs and 70's started upstairs

That's interesting. Mine doesn't. Mine will stop the other device that is streaming. I've heard a lot of people on reddit seem to have mixed results too. Edit. As above rwilts has posted, it seems to stop after the song ends on the other device but on mine it literally instantly stops the other one. I'll do some testing tonight.

Why would I spend £100 to use it as a bluetooth speaker? It's pretty pathetic it won't play MP3/FLAC over wifi, given it is on your network anyway, as the quality of music over bluetooth is not good. The speaker also really doesn't sound that good for £100.

If I want to do that, I would have bought an even cheaper bluetooth speaker.

But if that's all you use yours for, more power to you :unamused:

Haven't cought up with all the releases but I still love my two. They still function well and as they were both bought at substantial discount from RRP I am still happy.

I do find it funny that a product that is sold on voice interaction that are now trying to sell physical buttons to interact with it.
The future of home automation and voice control is physical contact.
Like when we spent 5 years getting our mobile phones as small as possible (Nokia 8810) and then being convinced for the following 10 years that they need to get bigger and bigger

You wouldn't be using a speaker like this for FLAC anyway... surely you would be using a much more expensive speaker to even gain any of the benefits of FLAC?

My point is, it doesn't do music file playing over WiFi and it's a really average speaker.

You'd hope that one doesn't buy it primarily for a speaker, but to call it a weak speaker I'd have to suggest otherwise. It's worth what you pay and not many things in life are. However it's got decent extra functions like voice stuff, and "skills" you can update with your phone n stuff. And now this has a built in hue bridge which is great. I for one am grateful for the share! Have some heat.

You do have a point, however I have my system set up to do multiple things on one command. E.g. turn off downstairs (turns off lights, TV, radio), it is also very useful if you have your hands full with shopping, etc

I disagree alt the speaker, it's not that pleasant.

Nearly every question you ask Alexa can't answer, hence why it was relegated to a kitchen timer. I don't think the extra functions are decent. Skills are very limited and often quite buggy.

I don't think it's ready yet and building a hue bridge in doesn't address these issues or improve it much.

Say I had 2 Echos, If I bought this one so the hub was built in would the other 2 be able to turn off lights by connecting to this one?

You actually have the intercom thing working on a uk only models setup?

It will be live within 24hrs....they are promoting it across all amazon platforms and it should have been live today...would imagine it’s an Apple approval delaying the iOS app update. Amazon confirmed by email

What does a the Hue hub offer ? There are lights that the Echo can control - so I'm not clear on the advantage that Hue offers and the need for a hub.

Anyone know if this will replace a hue hub and a Harmony hub? I'm guessing it can't emulate the Harmony hub with IR output but would be worth the price just to remove some devices if it could...

I find it bizarre how people are paying 100+ to have a closed system, glorified lightswitch and music player. Not to mention this is a constantly online and listening appliance brought to you by a massive global company. You're pretty much paying them to improve their data collection projects

It sounds like it else it'd be a cost prohibitive solution. The new firmware seems to have lots that allows units to talk to one another

Yup I'm not saying value in devices with screens so the kit I've got is fine. On the other hand I do want the new firmware they've had in the US that allows calling etc. I don't think the new echo has any difference in capability apart from the smaller hardware.

One thing I think they never did is for the dot to always route the Alexa responses through the internal speaker even if connected via Jack because I don't want to have to turn on the audio setup for the weather news and mundane stuff

They're adding multi room support for spotify and it's already available on tuneIn

I searched for the answer to this everywhere but no luck, as I have 3 dots and one echo. I thought that by getting the echo plus I could get rid off my Hue Hub and Smarthings Hub. In the end I phoned Amazon and the response was that that I would have to keep the hubs, as only the echo plus could control without them. The normal echo and dots do not piggyback off the plus, so it would mean a echo plus in every room, if I wanted to get rid oh Hue and Smarthings Hub.

Not happy with that answer, so I phoned them again, completely opposite response this time. The old echo and dots will piggyback off the Echo plus, and no need to keep the hue hub. That makes much more sense, so will now order a echo plus.

Well if you didn't read it, you are hardly qualified to comment, let alone disagree with what you don't know is in there (because you didn't read it). That pretty much tells people all they need to know about the worth of your comments.

Well thats that idea dead, Seems silly, Surely if it can tell others to say play music it shouldnt be much more difficult to instruct lights to be turned on

Is my opinion of which I am fully entitled to.

Before you get on your high horse at least contribute and post more than two deals :stuck_out_tongue:

You may be entitled to it, but it still doesn't make it worth anything.

It launched yesterday Drop In it's called

I asked the question before as well. Are people getting the drop in function today on UK models in the UK? Because it's not in my app and there's no update available for my app.

It's live m8, can you private message me can link you to apk

Could HAVE.

Well, if you own hue already then you're really just talking about a bit of added convenience, and a cool feature to play with

And hue isn't about the ways to control it so much as the ambience

So it's not like everyone is buying all this stuff just to replace their light switches

I'll wait for the Google Home Max which could compete against the likes of the Sonus Play:3

My echo turns the lights on, accurately upon request about 40% of the time, by the effort used I could actually get off my butt and just do it, these things are a fad, unrealiable and overall pointless, I have four dots, wasted money and effort I will never recover!

I honestly can't relate to people who have a mostly negative experience with Echo's. I am blown away with mine and use it everyday for cooking, calendar, lists, music and more, it's been nothing but a pleasure to have around. My family are all getting an Echo for Christmas with the £50 off 3 deal. :smile: sorted.

I already own a Nvidia shield, there's now a new update that allows you to use a smart thing link that will make the shield in to hub...

androidpolice.com/201…er/


Seems to be a better cheaper way of going smart

Have you got drop in working yet? Still no update

Nope. Just checked myself. I'm on iOS but I think Android might have it, from something someone told me.

Apparently this is caused by similar names particularly the same words at the ends of your device names. I’ve the same issue just haven’t got around to renaming everything, though the word lights at the ends seems a logical way to have done it in the first place.

I’ve just spoken to live chat. They have confirmed it’s an issue with the app and they hope to have it resolved in 48hrs

As someone has already pointed out how easy is to turn a light switch on. But for me I bought a smart plug but only to switch a standard lamp on and I'll probably use it to switch xmas tree lights on which are also awkward to reach. So they are good for certain applications

Sort of true, but I bought an new echo for 90 inc del with 3 payments from QVC, and a new dot on gumtree for 35 quid, then a rake of sonnoff switches and yeelight bulbs, I like it, loads of faddy tech for a couple of hundred quid.... plus summat to keep my 50yr old brain active :smile:

There is lots of talk of working with hue lights? Does anyone know if it will work with wemo light's! I have 2 and a hub but Alexa never finds it. The only way Alexa controls then is with yonomi which is quite unreliable

Really? Perhaps I'm not understand correctly. I have a Philips ambilight TV. I don't currently have any Hue bulbs. If I get an Echo Plus and 4 Hue GU10s (to replace my existing spots), will I be able to connect the ambilight TV to the Hue bulbs to achieve an extended ambilight effect, or is this only achievable with the official Philips Hue hub (not with only the Echo Plus shortcut)?

Drop in function is now working for those that are interested ( intercom)

Ours works nearly all the time. Only problems are when someone upstairs and someone downstairs trying to talk to it, and as mentioned if the room names end the same. We have several rooms so it sometimes fails to distinguish between Tarquin's room, Theodore's room, Cordelia's room, cinema room, utility room for example. Mix the names up a bit and it's ok, or add to groups, for example turn off bedrooms, or turn off east wing.

Can this model be plugged into an amplifier like the echodots?

Pete_101 excellent I've seen that but never thought to set it up. Thanks for the tip I certainly will try that :thumbsup: