What this is, is a first impression based on hands-on experience with the new Alexa from someone who was once a consistent user of Amazon\u2019s original voice assistant. Back then, I relied on Alexa for the kind of straightforward things many of us did every day: playing music, checking the weather, requesting sports scores, setting timers, and answering the types of questions that grade-school kids would get a kick out of (\u201cAlexa, who would win a battle between a lion and a snow leopard?\u201d). But over the years, Alexa\u2019s performance seemed to deteriorate\u2014it had more trouble understanding basic requests and definitely could not hold a conversation like popular AI chatbots could.\u00a0 Eventually, my family\u2019s interest\u2014and patience\u2014waned.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ve been waiting for a new and improved Alexa for quite some time, and when I recently received an invitation offering \u201cearly access\u201d to the beta version of Alexa+, I was eager to take it for a verbal spin.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth noting that Amazon first announced what would become Alexa+ back in September of 2023, but the launch has been repeatedly held up amid \u201cstructural dysfunction and technological challenges,\u201d as Fortune <\/em>reported last June, and later by issues related to how slow the assistant was to respond to commands or complete actions. In February, Amazon finally unveiled details of Alexa+ at a splashy launch event, but did not launch the service widely at the time; instead, it\u2019s been rolling out Alexa+ little by little, in a phased approach (Amazon says that millions of people now have access to Alexa+). Prime members don\u2019t pay anything for the Alexa upgrade, but nonmembers will pay around $20 a month after the official launch, the company has said. For now, early access is free to Prime and non-Prime members alike. The company has not formally announced an official full public launch date.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve spent some time over the past few weeks using Alexa+ for some of the same things we used its predecessor for, as well as trying out some of the new actions, like booking an Uber and restaurant reservation, that Amazon is pushing. My first impression, in short, is that the service is pretty good. If it had launched shortly after Amazon first announced an updated version of Alexa in the fall of 2023, I might have said it was very good. Its conversational abilities are real and mostly very fluid. Does it blow away voice modes from\u00a0LLM-based AI assistants like ChatGPT\u00a0 and Perplexity? Not in my experience. But it is vastly superior in that way to the original Alexa so will likely come as a delightful surprise to those who haven\u2019t spent much time with those competitor services. On several occasions, though, I had to re-prompt Alexa by name in the middle of a back-and-forth conversation\u2014I thought I had just taken a normal, mid-speaking pause but Alexa thought differently. If such instances continue to occur at public launch, it might not be a deal breaker for regular usage, but would certainly frustrate me\u2014and I assume some others, too.<\/p>\n I also had some issues with playing Spotify using the new Alexa, unless I specified that I wanted it played on the specific Alexa device in front of me. The gadget in question was an eight-inch Echo Show device (the Echo device with a screen) to test out Alexa+ because the technology isn\u2019t available on some of Amazon\u2019s older speakers, including the original Pringles-box-shaped Echo speakers, one of which still sits on a shelf in our dining room. (If you don\u2019t have an Echo device, you\u2019ll still be able to use the new Alexa+ from the Alexa app.)<\/p>\n Cayce Clifford\u2014Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The new Alexa told me Spotify was playing, when it actually wasn\u2019t. I thought perhaps it was somehow playing on the old Pringles-tube Echo downstairs, but that wasn\u2019t the case. A spokesperson recommended I change the default device for Spotify in the Alexa app but honestly, the Alexa app isn\u2019t the most intuitive, and I gave up after about 10 minutes. Considering that playing music is one of the basic and common tasks for a smart speaker, this didn\u2019t inspire a lot of confidence, but I am not ruling out the possibility that I\u2019m overlooking a setting that would fix the issue.<\/p>\n The other flaws I ran into ranged from comical to frustrating. An on-screen prompt on the Echo Show advertised that Alexa could help me choose a new lunch spot, but when I queried Alexa about it the first time, she claimed she couldn\u2019t carry out that task.\u00a0<\/p>\n I also made the mistake, apparently, of asking Alexa to slow down her speaking cadence at some point so I could take some handwritten notes. That simple command kicked off a minutes-long bizarro-world exchange in which I would ask Alexa to speed up or slow down her cadence, and she\u2019d reply that she had\u2014but at a speed which was even more drastically opposite of what I had been requesting. It took several minutes, but what felt like an eternity, to rectify.\u00a0<\/p>\n On another occasion, Alexa got snippy with me when I seemed astonished that she had instructed me to simply unplug and then reconnect my Echo device to try to solve the aforementioned Spotify issue. \u201cIt\u2019s your problem not mine\u201d was essentially the gist of the response. Can an AI offend me? I mean, that\u2019d be pretty silly. The exchange was a bit off-putting, though mildly amusing as well.<\/p>\n On this point, Panos Panay, the longtime Microsoft executive who joined Amazon in late 2023 to head up Alexa and its broad array of devices from Echos to Kindles to Fire TV sticks, seemed intrigued.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re testing a few of the boundaries,\u201d he told me in an interview at the company\u2019s New York City headquarters in early July. \u201cLike, yeah, you want a little personality out of your assistant, and you want it to feel or be personal. I think that\u2019s okay. Where is that boundary is an interesting question.\u201d<\/p>\n For my daughter, Alexa+\u2019s ability to generate images and \u201cpaintings\u201d based on voice commands was a treat. I also tried some of the advertised \u201cactions\u201d that Panay and Amazon\u00a0believe\u00a0will set Alexa apart from competitors and transform it into more of an agent than an assistant. I asked Alexa to book a reservation for me and my wife at a new local sushi restaurant we\u2019ve been meaning to try\u2014and finally could with our kids spending the weekend with a relative. Disappointingly, though, Alexa replied that she couldn\u2019t make a reservation at that restaurant, which doesn\u2019t use OpenTable for its reservations; that\u2019s the only current partner that Alexa+ has in the space. Alexa instead simply offered me the restaurant\u2019s phone number, which \u2026 was not exactly what I was looking for. It\u2019s possible that Amazon ends up cutting a deal with Resy, the restaurant reservation service that the restaurant in question uses. While Panay said more partnerships were in the works, neither he nor a spokesperson would confirm specifics.<\/p>\n That said, ordering an Uber by voice worked seamlessly (once I agreed to provide access to my Uber account), though I do wonder how often people will opt for this experience versus simply pulling out their phone. Browsing and homing in on the cheapest soccer tickets at a nearby stadium also worked quite well though, again, I wonder if talking out loud to a virtual ticket assistant for four minutes is actually any better or more efficient than searching for the tickets on my phone or computer.<\/p>\n Panay told me beta feedback so far is \u201coverwhelmingly positive,\u201d and that the \u201cconversational aspect\u201d of Alexa+ alone\u2014versus the prompt and response mode of the original\u2014is delighting customers. \u201cIt\u2019s just a part of the kitchen conversation at this point,\u201d he noted, emphasizing his point with an anecdote about his family settling debates or open questions by querying Alexa+ rather than pulling out a phone and falling prey to all the distractions that come with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the idea of being engaged with each other and having an ambient assistant there, where I\u2019m not turning on my phone, I\u2019m not opening an app, I\u2019m not being distracted by whatever it is that is on my notifications,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One major caveat is that I wasn\u2019t able to try out everything that Amazon is excited about. Panay stressed that while engagement with \u201ctraditional features\u201d like playing music are increasing, the household-management capabilities of Alexa+ are a hit with early users and he believes they\u2019ll continue to be. In one example, he discussed giving Alexa access to a family\u2019s calendar and then prompting it for the best weekend to get away. I haven\u2019t tried that feature\u00a0mainly because you can\u2019t yet link work email accounts from Google or Microsoft to Alexa+, and because our kids\u2019 sports calendars are spread across several apps that I\u2019m frankly too lazy to consolidate (yes, embarrassing).<\/p>\n Andrej Sokolow\u2014picture alliance\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Panay also highlighted shopping tools powered by Alexa+ that notify you when a certain product goes on sale. And he stressed the ease with which Alexa users who have outfitted their home with smart devices\u2014think smart lights and smart locks \u2014will be able to speak into existence complex routines.<\/p>\n \u201cAlexa, every night at 8:30, start dimming the lights in the house and then lock the doors,\u201d he said by way of example.<\/p>\n That\u2019s four separate commands in one sentence, versus what would have taken at least a dozen and a half steps within the Alexa app previously, Panos said.<\/p>\n \u201cJason, please don\u2019t underestimate the power of this,\u201d Panay urged me.<\/p>\n One approach Amazon and Panay could take would be to set expectations a bit low and then overdeliver after such a long wait. After all, the introduction of the original Alexa occurred in a really understated way; it was buried within a larger announcement unveiling a surprise device called the Echo.<\/p>\n But that could be dangerous in its own right, especially amid the realization that former famed Apple designer Jony Ive is now helping ChatGPT-maker OpenAI invent its own AI-powered device.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI hope others make great devices,\u201d Panay said when asked about competitors.<\/p>\n Perhaps in response, though, Amazon recently said it would buy an AI wearable startup called Bee<\/a>.<\/p>\n Panay, for his part, acknowledged that there is still work to do before the new Alexa is ready to be used by hundreds of millions of existing users. And after such a long wait\u2014with Panay himself setting expectations high\u2014it\u2019s fair to wonder if \u201cpretty good\u201d is anywhere good enough in the new world that Amazon\u2019s famed voice assistant is now reentering. Clearly, there\u2019s more work to do.<\/p>\n Are you a current or former Amazon employee with thoughts on this topic or a tip to share? Contact Jason Del Rey at\u00a0<\/em>jason.delrey@fortune.com,\u00a0<\/em>jasondelrey@protonmail.com, or through messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp at\u00a0<\/em>917-655-4267. You can also contact him\u00a0<\/em>on LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0or at\u00a0<\/em>@delrey<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/em>X,\u00a0@jdelrey<\/a>\u00a0on Threads, and\u00a0on Bluesky<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m going to start with a caveat from the top: This is not a formal product review. That\u2019s not my background nor expertise, and if that\u2019s what you are looking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":616,"featured_media":5466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[6581,6734,6391,5850,6736,6735],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan you hear the music playing?<\/h2>\n
Alexa\u2019s new tricks<\/h2>\n
\u2018Please don\u2019t underestimate the power of this\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2201496845-e1753482479118.jpg?w=1440&q=85\")