Amazon Echo vs. Amazon Tap

It is amazing how a seemingly simple device can so quickly become a part of your everyday life without you really considering its impact on the many different types of interactions you may have with it. The Amazon Echo has become one of those devices that hardly ever remains unused in the household either by myself or my wife. We use it as an speaker extension to our many handheld devices to entertain us through a davorite podcast while we play words with friends on a lazy weekend afternoon. We'll request from Alexa to play some accoustical music to give us some background music while we discuss and solve the many items that come in our daily lives. I come down in the morning and ask for my daily calendar to begin for the day's events that I must prepare to work on.

With the ability to play online radio stations, I can get information on what is happening on sports talk shows and other news stations in our local area. It has caused me to look for applications that will enhance its capabilities like finding a program to sync my outlook calendar with my google calendar so that I don't have to do double input in both areas. 

I love redirecting the playing of my Audible books to the Alexa to give my ears a rest from the earbuds I wear all night long. While the Echo might not have the rich bases that some other wireless/bluetooth speakers might have, it more then sufficient for the spoken word.

I just finished a review of the Amazon Tap that was written up on the Verge and can see many of the points that they brought with the Magic being lost with not being able to grab Alex's attention by addressing it from across the room. Having to physically touch a similar device to get its attention reduces its impact. But this drawback might not be as bad in certain types of use scenarios. I could see where the device is always at arms length, that reaching out to begin your interaction might not be so bad and the fact that it is so portable makes it nice to be able to bring it with you as your location continues change as it does so often during the long summer days.

It has a nice long battery life (9 hours), that makes it a functioning companion for a relatively full day of use. This makes it that much more intriguing to me to actually mke me consider adding it our household of friendly devices.