I’ve waited two years to try out the new Alexa, which was first announced way back in 2023, and this week I finally got access to Alexa Plus. I’ve now spent 24 hours with Amazon’s generative AI-powered voice assistant, and it’s not just an improvement on the original; it’s an entirely new assistant.
Alexa Plus knows more, can do more, and is easier to interact with because it understands more. I can ramble, pause, sigh, cough, change my request mid-sentence, and it can adapt and respond appropriately. No more, “Sorry, I’m not sure about that.” Miraculous.
I’m impressed, but I found a few flaws. It’s no secret that Amazon has been struggling to reinvent Alexa; reports of delays and setbacks have plagued the project since it was announced. Amazon’s slow rollout of Alexa Plus is also a clue that confidence isn’t sky-high. While the expansion has recently ramped up (Amazon told me it’s now in “many millions” of homes), the upgraded assistant is still in Early Access. It’s a beta product, but that means it should get better.
I’ll publish an in-depth hands-on with Alexa Plus after spending a lot more time with it and testing the full list of new features it’s been pushing at me since arriving in my home. But here’s how I spent my first 24 hours with Alexa Plus along with my initial impressions of Alexa’s metamorphosis.
Echo smart displays get an updated UI when Alexa Plus is activated. Here it is on the Show 21.
Wednesday night tacos
Alexa Plus landed on my Echo devices fairly late in the day, so, after going through some simple setup steps, my first experiment was having it help me cook dinner.
I asked Alexa for a recipe for salmon tacos, told it I wanted the first one it suggested, and asked it to read me the steps. This is something I’ve done many times before, and while Alexa responded with more detailed suggestions and in a more conversational tone, it mostly felt like business as usual.
But then, as it was reading me the steps, it displayed everything it was saying in a full-screen, chatbot-style interface on the Show 8 smart display, rather than just showing a static page of recipe steps and ingredients.
It’s a vast improvement over cooking with the old Alexa
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