AIBU to not buy multiple echo dot's without knowing it they will do the job?

[ChristmasLightLover]

DH thinks as they are on offer, we should have one for each bedroom (x3), one for kitchen (x1) and one for each lounge (x2). I think that we do not need all this stuff. How many do you have in your house? Where do you use them the most?

Also, please explain to me if we as a family, we can each be in our bedrooms, with an echo dot and each listen to a different audible book, from the same audible family account, or the same spotify family account, whilst we go to sleep. Is this possible?? I can't work this out.

We've got the Echo Show (the one with a screen) and a couple of cameras that we use for home security/baby monitor. It's okay for listening to music and watching the cameras on but I don't find that I use it for much else, I certainly wouldn't need one in every room. It does have a lot of features like to-do lists, shopping lists, smart home control, reminders etc so I guess if you'd use those features it might be handy. Not sure about multiple devices.

I'd personally get one first and see how much you use it. The Black Friday sales will be on for a while yet, so there's plenty of time to get more if your DH suddenly finds them life-changing.

Don't forget the portable battery base so you can have one in the bathroom too....

I had an Echo and sent it back because I absolutely couldn't work out anything it was useful for. It just seemed much more complicated than using your phone. I certainly wouldn't buy a whole lot of them without checking that you like one first!

Tbh if you're thinking of buying several I'd buy them while they're so cheap. Set up a couple and see how you get on then if you decide against them send them back. I've never seen them as cheap as £19.99 before

I have a few, but I use them to voice control the Hue lighting, the Sonos and the Nest thermostat. Other than that they get asked the weather forecast, the kitchen one acts as a timer, and one is used as an alarm clock. They get played with by visitors. Asking Alexa random questions gets old very, very, VERY quickly.

I got them because I LOVE gadgets, and because they are the simplest, best and easiest way for my utterly, hopelessly technocrap husband to be able to use smart items.

If you don't have any smart home items I cannot think why you would need one in each room. I suppose they could be used as an intercom? I cannot answer about Audible (as I have a kindle and would use that if I really wanted audio books) but each dot acts independently in my setup. I would imagine they could read different books - they certainly can control different Sonos speakers in different rooms playing different spotify tracks.

Amazon only let me buy 2 on the deal, but they are price matched elsewhere.

@Haffiana tell me about the echo with the Sonos we are just about to complete on a house with an integrated Sonos system whose controls live in a server room and as I understand it I need some kind of device to link from the zoned rooms to the server to get music etc.
Plus thinking of Putting dots in the bedrooms instead of clock radios etc. as house is very new and streamlined.

lonecat, you can control Sonos with any echo, we have just a bog standard echo dot and then 3 sonos play ones. You can control them from the dot, but the dot won’t play in sync with the sonos, it’s a control only. (And will obvs play its own stuff)

We have dots in each of the teenage kids bedrooms and in the living room, full size echos in the kitchen and our bedroom. Love ours!

Have them in most rooms. Love the fact that when I'm on my own and can ask her to play my playlist everywhere and the house bounces 😁

Seriously though, I use them to control lighting, listen to the radio and to tell DH in the garage his tea is ready.
When I'm getting ready in the morning I ask it to give me a flash briefing and I'll get news, the sport I follow news and weather.

My favourite is this one. Knackered radio was a fiver from The Range, spent a happy afternoon with my dremmel and made this:

The full size echo is a much better speaker, I'd have that in a big room and dots only in smaller rooms.

Yes, we gave bedroom kitchen living room and are now getting for kids rooms and dining room

Buy them all
We use them for phone calls, as an intercom, music, lighting, news updates, to do list, shopping list, alarms, stories, and soon the heating

Haha! My husband loves technology and has slowly been building up our techno house. They are great for asking about weather playing radio/ if you have smart lighting light tradfri or Philips hue you can control the brightness and switch lights on and off with it. ( amazon have them on offer at mo ... ) we have one with the monitor that is kind of handy as we have RingGo security cameras / doorbell on the house and you can see the image from there.
But if your not sure I would imagine 2 to start is adequate one for bedroom and one for downstairs ... Philips hue have an amazing deal on starter pack with amazon too ( though you may balk at the price/ I did initially but as it’s been a gradual investment it’s not so bad for us) ... it does make life a little easier I confess. But mostly for lights.

We have nest heating too ... and this links in so it knows the indoor temperature.

I got an echo dot and fire stick on prime dag. Just bought lightbulbs, plugs, a camera and echo plus.

Have the dot in DDs and DSes room and the plus in the lounge

Forgot the heating! Ours controls Tado as well, with radiator valves in every room I can voice control temperature across the house.

The of course it's most important feature....the daily round of Pointless!

They come on sale every few months - not as cheap as the current deal right enough, but it’s the old Dots they’re selling on the good deal isn’t it, not the ones that were released earlier this month?

We started with the Echo, liked it, then got two Dots. As we’re hoping to venture more towards a ‘smart’ home, with lightbulbs etc we’re hoping to buy the Echo Plus next. The Echo Plus has the thingy inside it which communicates with the smart bulbs. If we wanted to get a smart bulb at the moment then we’d either have to buy the thingy which gets the Echo/Echo Dot to ‘talk’ with the smart bulb, or we’d have to buy the crazy priced smart bulbs which have the thingy built into them (so you have to ensure every light you wanted to control had the thingy built in to each individual bulb, or buy a single thingy to connect your Dot and your smart bulbs etc, or - buy an Echo Plus)

Does that make sense?

Ah, the latest Dots are half price (£24.99) and the older Dots are £19.99

I’m not sure about audible. I’ll just try it

@3out the new gen dot is £24.99 delivered with Prime, the older one £19.99. The speakers are much improved in the new one so worth spending the extra fiver.

I have a 2nd gen one and have just ordered another one the same for DS for Xmas. You don't have to link them so can play music differently on each

Lonecatwithkitten - there will almost certainly be a system in place. Can you ask the vendor to tell you the name of the AV company that installed the server? Sonos speakers are used for playing wirelessly. They can stream from an hd such as a computer or music server, or from an internet source such as iTunes or Spotify. You can put the Sonos app on your phone, on a computer, or - and this may well be the case in your new home - you can have touch panels installed on the walls. Your server will be part of an integrated specialist AV hub that will connect your lights, tvs and sound systems, and possibly also curtains and blinds. You will (should!) have properly programmed remote controls that will at the press of a button turn on the telly, dim the lights and close the blind for example.

A kindle fire is the cheapest way to install a standalone Sonos app controller I have found btw, - much cheaper than any other sort of touchscreen controller. However even this was a bit too techno for my DH, so I put dots in.

So how do the dots come in? You need to allow the dots to link with the speakers by zone so that it knows which speakers are in which 'zone' eg kitchen, living room, etc etc. This is so that you can tell the dot to eg 'play Radio 4 in the kitchen' or 'play X's Spotify playlist in the living room'. Otherwise, rather horribly they will play whatever it is out of their own speaker and these are not quality. So if you only tell a dot to 'play Radio 4', without telling it which zone, it will obligingly do so itself (it defaults to TuneIN radio btw, but that can be changed). This may be fine for Radio 4 or for an audio book, but not for music.

Setting them up is really easy -they are designed to work well with Sonos, and they pick up Hue lights easily as well.

They are definitely more successful at 'play David Bowie Life on Mars in kitchen' than 'play Beethoven's Second Symphony in kitchen' but that is true of Spotify, iTunes etc etc as well since classical music seems to often be listed oddly. So a dot works well for some commands and not for others. It complements a Sonos app rather than replaces it.

They are really excellent for the kitchen, you can listen to radio/podcasts completely hands free while you cook and you can also use them to set multiple timers hands free. So useful.

They make good radio alarm clocks too, as well as speakers for listening to music.

They're not lifechanging per say, they just make everything a bit more convenient. Would highly recommend as they're not expensive.

If you get them and Amazon music premium, as I understand it, you can listen to different music simultaneously on different speakers. To listen to different music on Spotify simultaneously, I believe you need different Spotify accounts or a family account, and you need to set each Dot up to a different Amazon account and Spotify account. Well this is what I have done. My kids have Echos linked to their own Amazon and Spotify accounts. We have a Dot that controls our Sonos with another Spotify account. All part of a Spotify Family subscription. It took me a while to work it out, but now it works well.

If anyone wants an echo alarm there is a clock. It's called 'Vobot' and works in the same way as a standard dot except for the fact you have to push a button to activate it.

It also doesn't have the capability to play music but for basic control it's very good.

www.volumerate.com/product/473817?adcurrency=GBP&gclid=CjwKCAiA8rnfBRB3EiwAhrhBGnEKQvrssOGfcoLVvVY3LQvza01Gs-V8Cid-pHF4HsGRMXIjWPPP0BoCVzgQAvD_BwE

All our devices are run off the same account and I’ve just managed to play three different books simultaneously via audible.

I agree AWK, I think it’s worth spending the extra fiver. Wish the Echo Plus was on as at half price!!