See what Alexa can do
Usually I listen to my music on speakers that weigh 100 pounds each or in the kitchen on a micro stereo unit because there's not much room for a bigger unit. However it would be most unfair of me to compare it with a really expensive system, so I'm reviewing it in view of what it costs and how small it is and it does perform astonishingly well. For such a tiny unit it produces very smooth very clear bass sounds, listening to various pieces of classical music the bowed double basses came out really clearly. The middle is quite clear and the treble is quite okay but it lacks a bit of detail and can go a little bit sharp if played too loud, but it's a low price budget unit. One thing I've noticed about it, it appears to boost the bass at lower listening levels, this is actually a considerable advantage because the ear is less sensitive to bass notes at low volume. I believe years ago it was called a loudness control as opposed to a volume control that had this feature. I've linked it by Bluetooth to my phone so anything happening on my phone including my alarms as well as music also comes out of this unit if I wish. I've also set it up to switch on and off one lamp and I'll set it up to do another one later on as well. I can also control it when not in the house I can turn lights on and off but I've not learnt how to set how bright they are so far, only when I'm inside. So what's not to like about it you may ask well setting it up what's a massive pain I had to ring up Amazon customer services helpline. I'll explain why I set it up linked it to the internet that wasn't very hard and it worked for about five seconds, it greeted me and then it invited me to ask it to question like what is the weather like and I did and it replied something's gone wrong and apart from remaining lit up it wouldn't do anything. The other thing I couldn't do is link it to my phone by Bluetooth but I can tell you how to do that my phone allows only the Echo unit to be linked at any one time so I had to disconnect the micro Hi-Fi unit which was also linked to my phone by Bluetooth then it linked straight away. Having Googled the problem it appears a lot of phones allow you to link only one item but my phone should allow seven but no success yet I'm working on it. As for it jamming up I switched it on and off to reboot it that didn't cure it however the lady at Amazon told me a different way to reboot it by pressing two buttons at the same time and holding them down. I think it was the microphone button and the Plus button but I am not 100% certain. Fortunately I didn't have to enter the Wi-Fi password again because it is a pain as it's so long and complicated with all sorts of characters and upper and lowercase letters. For an even better listening experience I believe a pair of them set say six feet apart would give a very nice proper stereo performance but I don't really need that because I have my main stereo system to listen to. It does perform rather better than the smaller version the Echo dot and it does justify being more money. I think that's about it I've said enough, for its size and price it is very highly recommended.
PS I've also tried it on the floor on a carpet and raised up about two feet off the ground and it sounded fine under both conditions, possibly being on the floor gives it a little bit more of a heavy sound perhaps the bass is a bit weightier.
PPS you might want to know how loud it goes, if you push it to maximum it goes a bit muddled doesn't sound as nice it's probably going a bit distorted but up to 80% it performs really really well and in the average size room it would be reasonably loud not loud enough to imitate a whole Orchestra but loud enough to be classed as quite
loud by most people that's the best explanation I can give.
PPPS I was so impressed I bought a second one while the offer was still on and paired them. So now I have real stereo it's most impressive for relatively cheap items I'm listening to Mahler's Fifth Symphony, very spacious sound with the depth, wonderful double basses, as a stereo pair they seem to perform better on some classical music than they do on some pop music. For clean sound don't go above eight or nine at 10 the maximum it can get a bit muddled overloaded with slight distortions
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