Is There An Echo In Here? Amazon's Super Bowl Star Is Winning The Smart Home Game

In a year of relatively lackluster Super Bowl ads -- and little consensus on which among them were the true standouts -- Amazon dropped its millions to show up one of its least known products: the Echo. Part always-on assistant (think Siri), part music player, Echo got mixed reviews when Amazon launched the product last year. Somehow though, Alexa -- as she's generally known to owners because that's the name she'll answer to -- has become a sleeper hit. Part of it is her near magical ability to be called on from a good distance away and her reliability in responding. In my experience, "Alexa" elicits a lot more success across the room than "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" on compatible devices.

But much of it is that Alexa is getting smarter, faster than her compatriots. In that early review at The Verge, one of the negatives listed was: "Needs a real ecosystem outside of Amazon." And while there's still a ton of work to do, a year later, the Echo has one. Amazon claims that more than 100 new skills have been learned by Alexa since launch, most recently the ability to order a Domino's pizza or request an Uber.

The Echo also integrates with Spotify Premium if you're a subscriber and while the experience isn't quite perfect yet, it shows the kind of magic that having an always-on, voice-enabled computer provides. Alexa plus Spotify is revelatory in the way iTunes or Sonos were when they first burst upon the scene. Everyone else should be scrambling to provide an experience this good. The new Apple TV has voice control too. The fact that it (1) requires you to press a button to activate Siri and (2) doesn't have a speaker that automagically just starts playing music makes it seem obsolete by comparison.

Some might argue that pitting the two against each other doesn't seem fair: Apple's set-top box is primarily a video player and Echo is... well, it's hard to say and that's part of why the Super Bowl ad was a coming-out party. Amazon sold Echo at first as this ineffable thing that felt like an experiment on the part of the company to see if people would pay nearly $200 to put a microphone in their home that listened all the time. (Echo is always waiting to hear the word "Alexa" -- or "Amazon" if you have someone named "Alexa" in your home. In theory, it's discarding all other audio until it does.)

The core functionality offers up what might be the world's greatest kitchen timer (you never have to worry about sticky hands), an easy way to pull up the basics that your phone offers when it isn't close by (sports scores, news, weather, movie times) and some special Amazon magic (it will read Kindle books aloud and play Amazon radio stations as well as Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn). The audio quality is surprisingly pleasant, though not especially high fidelity. But what's slowly happening is that Echo is becoming a trojan horse in the smart-home wars, arguably making progress that others have talked about but haven't done much for.

When Google bought Nest and Apple rolled out Home Kit, there was hope that both would usher in a new era of connected devices that allowed for easy control of lights, appliances and other devices. Yet two years after Google's acquisition, Nest is still primarily a thermostat company that makes a very expensive smoke detector and bought Dropcam. Apple arguably has achieved less. Amazon for its part hasn't tried to create an ecosystem around the Echo, instead choosing to support others. Alexa can voice control the following smart devices: Belkin WeMo, Philips Hue, SmartThings, Insteon, and Wink . 

Those systems have varying degrees of capability that tend to correspond with how long they've been around (the older the more powerful) but also differ on ease of use (the newer the simpler to work with). In my home, I've been implementing Insteon, which qualifies as ancient by this standard. For a while I was regretting that decision until along came Alexa. With a $79 upgrade to the hub that controls my system, all the old devices and switches will continue to work but voice control will be added to the package. (Disclaimer: I haven't made all this happen yet. I promise a follow-up post on the process of what it took and how it works once I do.)

There is similar functionality in the Apple TV when it comes to home control. The difference is in the magic. Try walking in your front door and going, "Hey Siri turn on living room" without touching anything. It can be done even with my Insteon system. The catch? The hub is more pricey at $149, it's more work to get it all configured, and if the iPhone doesn't decide to respond to the commands because of distance or crankiness, it just won't work. Apple and Google should both steal a page from Amazon's playbook and build this ambient listening into the next generation of Apple TV and the Nest thermostat respectively.

It's also worth noting that only the iPhone 6s can respond to "Hey Siri" without being plugged into power; the Echo is always plugged in and ready to go. Amazon never talks up how many of these things are really selling, but it's clear that Echo is gaining popularity over time as both functionality and word of mouth increase. A 4.4 star rating doesn't hurt, of course, but the bigger boost will likely come from more support like the Uber, Spotify and Domino's deals. It feels like Alexa is on the cusp of entering the zeitgeist as the "it gadget." Once you get one, you find it increasingly useful over time and generally harmless the rest of the time. Technology that's mostly invisible except when it's helpful is one of those design goals that's easy to aim for but very hard to achieve.

The Echo is still an infant and she's just learning how to make herself heard. After Super Bowl Sunday, more than 100 million people know her name is Alexa.