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Amazon Alexa is a smart assistant launched by Amazon, released in 2014, and launched on the Amazon store on November 13, 2014. Amazon Alexa was originally used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker. It features voice interaction, music playback, to-do lists, alarm clocks, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, sports, and other real-time information. Alexa can also use itself as a smart home system to control multiple smart devices, and users can extend Alexa functionality by installing plug-ins.

Amazon Alexa has 2,844,206 reviews in Google Play store and a review of 4.3 stars out of 5. In US Apple App store it has 4.6 stars rating and ranked as #7 in Lifestyle. There are 4.2M ratings received in iOS App store. Amazon Alexa has 113,539 reviews in Amazon store and a review of 4.4 stars out of 5. Among its general functions, voice recognition and sleep mode are all 4.2 stars out of 5, ease of use and user interface are 4.1 stars and 3.8 stars respectively.

In the latest update version, Amazon Alexa developers have eliminated and optimized recent bugs and overall performance based on the latest feedback and comments from users.

Alexa is a personal virtual assistant pre-installed in Amazon Echo, which can receive and respond to voice commands. Alexa can be regarded as Amazon's version of Siri voice assistant. When using the Echo, just say "Alexa" to start asking questions, including news, creating task reminders, setting an alarm time, or playing music. At the same time, Alexa can also interact with various smart home devices to control the thermostat or adjust the lights, which looks cool. Alexa can handle any grammar, so users don't have to use a harsh tone, and basic Alexa can recognize it.

Amazon's Alexa is open to the outside world. Not only Echo can be used, but other hardware is also useful. Developers can develop plug-ins for Alexa and contribute more functions. If Starbucks wants users to order their coffee through Alexa, they only need to develop a small Plug-ins will do, and there are thousands of businesses doing this now.

Alexa's APP can only be used after opening the corresponding skills. If you want to experience it, you can browse Alexa's Web APP: http://alexa.amazon.com. After entering the Web APP, you can set the function of listening to music and listening to books in the Music&Books menu on the right, and click the menu Skills to set up skill plug-ins. There are tens of thousands of skill plug-ins, and they are basically functions developed by third-party developers for Alexa.

Under the menu Home, you can see the history of conversations with the speaker, and you can mark whether you are satisfied with the answers to each conversation, which can help Alexa complete "machine learning". The chat history between users and Alexa is only visible to themselves and is closed to developers.

If you want your Alexa smart device to be able to control your home appliances, you also need to enable the corresponding skill plug-in. Amazon attracts ordinary users to talk to it through Alexa, and attracts more developers to contribute plug-ins to it, and at the same time protects the rights and interests of ordinary users and developers, and the product also does not ask for the core data of developers. The conversation records of ordinary users will not be opened to developers. The author believes that this is also a very important reason for the success of Alexa. Because Alexa is not bound to any hardware solution, the hardware cost can be reduced, and Alexa does not charge for voice technology, and users only pay for the content during the use of the product.

Pros:

1. Help users with reminders, enabling users to jot down everything at once. View and edit shopping and to-do list on the go, get weather and news updates, manage timers and alarms, and more.

2. Allows users to intelligently control or check the status of furniture such as compatible smart lights, locks and thermostats.

Cons:

1. Responsiveness is sometimes insensitive or inappropriate, which can lose users' frequency of using it.

2. Sometimes the connected furniture system loses contact, and voice-activated furniture doesn't work.