Surprise Hit Christmas gift

[strollin]

I got all my kids (all grown adults) Amazon Echo Dots for Christmas. I ordered and had them in my possession at Thanksgiving. About a week ago we saw an ad for Echo on TV and my son remarked that those things were dumb and he couldn't see any use for one. I figured I'd give him the one I got him anyway and then deal with returning it after Christmas.

The kids opened them and set them up and they have been a surprise hit (even my son loves his). Now they are talking that they want to get them for my wife and I so we can join in.

Anybody else using one of the Amazon Echo products?

Any other surprise hit Christmas gifts?

 

[Celery]

Sound like an interesting gadget.

I got myself for Xmas an Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet for a really good price ($50 with offers) I liked to play games on my phone in my bed before retiring.

I got the tablet to use in bed and it's much better than I thought it would be. It's loaded to the gills and have 16 gig storage (12 gig available).

What Amazon have it's all there and since I have Prime it's really great.

 

[strollin]

Those Kindle Fire tablets are pretty cool. I had one of the original ones that I got for Christmas 2011, the first year they came out. After I outgrew it, I passed it on to my daughter.

Another thing I gave my kids that was a pretty big hit was that I packed their gifts in gag boxes. These are boxes that show pictures of a non-existent product on the outside so the person opening the gift thinks that is what's inside.

The best one was a "Pet Painting Kit" that depicted pictures of paint brushes and other items that attached to your pet so that they would create paintings by walking or wagging their tail. My daughter thought that's what her gift was and was actually disappointed that it was a gag.

Pictures:

 

[Wallaby Dan]

Hehehe!! Thats cool!!

 

[Celery]

That had me LOL!

 

[AMD_man]

Honestly the Amazon Echo Dot seems like an interesting device. However, I would find it hard to get used to speaking to the thing. I've never even used Google Assistant. But I guess you could only use it as a speaker. Does it sound louder than a smartphone?

 

[Cortb]

I've got my echo dot hooked up to my stereo and have it play music or NPR when i'm working on computers.

The only thing i dislike about the echo is that, unlike google products, it doesn't recognize MY voice. so every time something on tv says 'alexa' my echo goes off and says i can't understand you, or tries to look something up. There needs to be some sort of agreement that these trigger words shouldn't be used on tv or a fake trigger word like the 555-0125 phone numbers needs to be made.

I would have gotten the google home mini if it had an audio out port, but got the echo dot since it does.

 

[strollin]

I was also surprised that it couldn't be set to only respond to MY voice. Anyone can command Alexa (including the TV as you pointed out Cortb).

The Echo Dot is designed to be hooked up to an external speaker whereas the bigger Echo model has a larger speaker more suitable for listening to music.

 

[Cortb]

The other up side (aside from the headphone jack) is that i can have two separate systems that don't respond to each other's code words. I've heard people complain that when they say 'hey google' to their smart phone, the google home picks up too.