Order an Uber and find cheap soccer tickets by voice
I’m going to start with a caveat from the top: This is not a formal product review. Task: I’m going to start with a caveat from the top: This is not a formal product review. That’s not my background nor expertise, and if that’s what you are looking for, you are likely to walk away at least a little bit disappointed. What this is, is a first impression based on hands-on experience with the new Alexa from someone who was once a consistent user of Amazon’s original voice assistant. Back then, I relied on Alexa for the kind of straightforward things many of us did every day: playing music, checking the weather, requesting sports scores, setting timers, and answering the types of questions that grade-school kids would get a kick out of (“Alexa, who would win a battle between a lion and a snow leopard?”). But over the years, Alexa’s performance seemed to deteriorate—it had more trouble understanding basic requests and definitely could not hold a conversation like popular AI chatbots could. Eventually, my family’s interest—and patience—waned. So I’ve been waiting for a new and improved Alexa for quite some time, and when I recently received an invitation offering “early access” to the beta version of Alexa+, I was eager to take it for a verbal spin. It’s worth noting that Amazon first announced what would become Alexa+ back in September of 2023, but the launch has been repeatedly held up amid “structural dysfunction and technological challenges,” as Fortune reported last June, and later by issues related to how slow the assistant was to respond to commands or complete actions. In February, Amazon finally unveiled details of Alexa+ at a splashy launch event, but did not launch the service widely at the time; instead, it’s been rolling out Alexa+ little by little, in a phased approach (Amazon says that millions of people now have access to Alexa+). Prime members don’t pay anything for the Alexa upgrade, but nonmembers will pay around $20 a month after the official launch, the company has said. For now, early access is free to Prime and non-Prime members alike. The company has not formally announced an official full public launch date. I’ve spent some time over the past few weeks using Alexa+ for some of the same things we used its predecessor for, as well as trying out some of the new actions, like booking an Uber and restaurant reservation, that Amazon is pushing. My first impression, in short, is that the service is pretty good. If it had launched shortly after Amazon first announced an updated version of Alexa in the fall of 2023, I might have said it was very good. Its conversational abilities are real and mostly very fluid. Does it blow away voice modes from LLM-based AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity? Not in my experience. But it is vastly superior in that way to the original Alexa so will likely come as a delightful surprise to those who haven’t spent much time with those competitor services. On several occasions, though, I had to re-prompt Alexa by name in the middle of a back-and-forth conversation—I thought I had just taken a normal, mid-speaking pause but Alexa thought differently. If such instances continue to occur at public launch, it might not be a deal breaker for regular usage, but would certainly frustrate me—and I assume some others, too. Can you hear the music playing? I also had some issues with playing Spotify using the new Alexa, unless I specified that I wanted it played on the specific Alexa device in front of me. The gadget in question was an eight-inch Echo Show device (the Echo device with a screen) to test out Alexa+ because the technology isn’t available on some of Amazon’s older speakers, including the original Pringles-box-shaped Echo speakers, one of which still sits on a shelf in our dining room. (If you don’t have an Echo device, you’ll still be able to use the new Alexa+ from the Alexa app.) The new Alexa told me Spotify was playing, when it actually wasn’t. I thought perhaps it was somehow playing on the old Pringles-tube Echo downstairs, but that wasn’t the case. A spokesperson recommended I change the default device for Spotify in the Alexa app but honestly, the Alexa app isn’t the most intuitive, and I gave up after about 10 minutes. Considering that playing music is one of the basic and common tasks for a smart speaker, this didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but I am not ruling out the possibility that I’m overlooking a setting that would fix the issue.; tools: Alexa+. Human role: The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.; limitations: Alexa+ is currently in phased rollout with no official public launch date; early access is free for Prime and non-Prime members. The service is incompatible with older Echo devices (e.g., original Pringles-shaped Echo). Restaurant booking is limited to OpenTable partners. Work email integration (Google/Microsoft) is not yet supported. The author could not test all advertised features, such as complex smart home routines or calendar-based travel planning..
Tools
Published on Agent Work Atlas:
Overview
I’m going to start with a caveat from the top: This is not a formal product review.
Workflow
I’m going to start with a caveat from the top: This is not a formal product review. That’s not my background nor expertise, and if that’s what you are looking for, you are likely to walk away at least a little bit disappointed. What this is, is a first impression based on hands-on experience with the new Alexa from someone who was once a consistent user of Amazon’s original voice assistant. Back then, I relied on Alexa for the kind of straightforward things many of us did every day: playing music, checking the weather, requesting sports scores, setting timers, and answering the types of questions that grade-school kids would get a kick out of (“Alexa, who would win a battle between a lion and a snow leopard?”). But over the years, Alexa’s performance seemed to deteriorate—it had more trouble understanding basic requests and definitely could not hold a conversation like popular AI chatbots could. Eventually, my family’s interest—and patience—waned. So I’ve been waiting for a new and improved Alexa for quite some time, and when I recently received an invitation offering “early access” to the beta version of Alexa+, I was eager to take it for a verbal spin. It’s worth noting that Amazon first announced what would become Alexa+ back in September of 2023, but the launch has been repeatedly held up amid “structural dysfunction and technological challenges,” as Fortune reported last June, and later by issues related to how slow the assistant was to respond to commands or complete actions. In February, Amazon finally unveiled details of Alexa+ at a splashy launch event, but did not launch the service widely at the time; instead, it’s been rolling out Alexa+ little by little, in a phased approach (Amazon says that millions of people now have access to Alexa+). Prime members don’t pay anything for the Alexa upgrade, but nonmembers will pay around $20 a month after the official launch, the company has said. For now, early access is free to Prime and non-Prime members alike. The company has not formally announced an official full public launch date. I’ve spent some time over the past few weeks using Alexa+ for some of the same things we used its predecessor for, as well as trying out some of the new actions, like booking an Uber and restaurant reservation, that Amazon is pushing. My first impression, in short, is that the service is pretty good. If it had launched shortly after Amazon first announced an updated version of Alexa in the fall of 2023, I might have said it was very good. Its conversational abilities are real and mostly very fluid. Does it blow away voice modes from LLM-based AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity? Not in my experience. But it is vastly superior in that way to the original Alexa so will likely come as a delightful surprise to those who haven’t spent much time with those competitor services. On several occasions, though, I had to re-prompt Alexa by name in the middle of a back-and-forth conversation—I thought I had just taken a normal, mid-speaking pause but Alexa thought differently. If such instances continue to occur at public launch, it might not be a deal breaker for regular usage, but would certainly frustrate me—and I assume some others, too. Can you hear the music playing? I also had some issues with playing Spotify using the new Alexa, unless I specified that I wanted it played on the specific Alexa device in front of me. The gadget in question was an eight-inch Echo Show device (the Echo device with a screen) to test out Alexa+ because the technology isn’t available on some of Amazon’s older speakers, including the original Pringles-box-shaped Echo speakers, one of which still sits on a shelf in our dining room. (If you don’t have an Echo device, you’ll still be able to use the new Alexa+ from the Alexa app.) The new Alexa told me Spotify was playing, when it actually wasn’t. I thought perhaps it was somehow playing on the old Pringles-tube Echo downstairs, but that wasn’t the case. A spokesperson recommended I change the default device for Spotify in the Alexa app but honestly, the Alexa app isn’t the most intuitive, and I gave up after about 10 minutes. Considering that playing music is one of the basic and common tasks for a smart speaker, this didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but I am not ruling out the possibility that I’m overlooking a setting that would fix the issue.
Reported result
The author reported that conversational abilities are fluid and superior to the original Alexa, though not better than ChatGPT or Perplexity voice modes. Specific failures included Alexa falsely confirming Spotify playback, inability to book non-OpenTable restaurants, and erratic speech speed adjustments. The author expressed frustration with the Alexa app's intuitiveness and noted that the service is 'pretty good' but not flawless.
Human role
The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.
Limitations
Alexa+ is currently in phased rollout with no official public launch date; early access is free for Prime and non-Prime members. The service is incompatible with older Echo devices (e.g., original Pringles-shaped Echo). Restaurant booking is limited to OpenTable partners. Work email integration (Google/Microsoft) is not yet supported. The author could not test all advertised features, such as complex smart home routines or calendar-based travel planning.
Try it
I want to evaluate the reliability of Alexa+ for daily household tasks. I have an Echo Show 8 and access to the Alexa+ beta. Please guide me through a test sequence: 1) Ask Alexa to play a specific Spotify playlist on this device. 2) Verify if music actually plays; if not, attempt to change the default device in the Alexa app and note the time taken. 3) Ask Alexa to book a restaurant reservation at [replaceable restaurant name] and observe if it uses OpenTable or fails. 4) Ask Alexa to book an Uber to [replaceable destination]. 5) Engage in a multi-turn conversation about [replaceable topic] and count how many times you must re-prompt 'Alexa' due to pause detection errors. Do not proceed to real bookings or payments without my explicit confirmation for each step. Provide a summary of successes, failures, and friction points.
Source reports are not independently verified. Publication date is the catalog publication date, not the original article date.