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Amazon Item of the Day: Get the Amazon Echo Dot for $39.99 (20% Off)

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I’ve thought these smart speaker devices were super stupid for the longest time, largely because of my experiences with Siri. Well, last time the Amazon Echo Dot was on sale I decided, “Eh, Alexa is turning into a meme I’ll spend $40 and try this out, it can’t be worse than Siri." …Which rapidly turned into me strategically placing these things throughout my house because I use them so much. The Echo Dot I have in my bedroom I use as an alarm clock and to ask what the weather is going to be like when I’m getting dressed. The one in my bathroom (yes, I have one in my bathroom) I use to get “flash briefings" (quick news reports) to hear what’s going on during the day when I’m brushing my teeth. The Echo Dot in my kitchen is great for unit conversions and timers when cooking, and the list just goes on and on.

I think what makes Alexa so much more useful than Siri is it’s connected to Amazon’s larger cloud infrastructure which allow you to add “skills" to Alexa. For instance, if you enable the skills to do it, you can have it suggest wine pairings, order pizza, and even call people for you. My favorite killer feature is by using the Amazon Echo Dot as a poor man’s Sonos setup. I can say, “Alexa, play Spotify everywhere," and my music will play all over my house. There’s an AUX output on the back too, so I’ve got a couple of them hooked up to older Bluetooth speakers I had laying around for better audio quality.

The Amazon Echo Dot has been fairly surprising, as I was almost certain it was going to be super dumb or not very useful when I first ordered it, and my experience has been the exact opposite. If you’ve never fiddled with Alexa before, $39.99 (as of this writing) is a super low barrier to entry with giving it a go- Just beware, if you find it as useful as I have you’ll probably be buying way more than one.



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