Alexa is the voice of Amazon smart speakers, and as an AI voice assistant, it’s right up there with Siri and Google Assistant. In fact, in some devices, Alexa works alongside both, giving users a sort of back-up intelligence system. Although she plays well with others, Alexa works quite nicely alone. For those who are new to the world of Alexa, here are three great things you should know about it: 1) Alexa can guard your home when no one is home, and alert you to suspicious activity. It can also give you delivery notifications, among other standard smart-speaker functions. 2) When quiet is a must, Alexa can speak in a whisper. 3) Despite its Amazon connection, Alexa also works with Apple Music.
If you’re worried about intruders when you aren’t home, you can set up Alexa Guard so that the speaker’s built-in mic will listen for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, breaking glass and other warning sounds, and deliver a notification through your phone. It can also turn on smart lights every so often to make it look like someone is at home. All you have to do is say “Alexa, I’m leaving” to activate it. Alexa also allows you to set up location triggers so if you don’t want to enter a dark house, it can automatically turn on smart lights as soon as you pull up into the driveway.
Alexa is a stickler for syntax, so you have to be careful what you say and how you say it to be understood.However, Alexa is also sensitive to your voice tone. If noise-level is an issue, you can whisper a question or command to Alexa and receive a whispered response.
Alexa’s default music streaming app is Amazon Prime Music, but you can change settings to another one—even to Apple Music. Unfortunately, when it comes to listening to tunes, Alexa doesn’t play nicely with everyone; you can’t use it for Google Play Music.
