The Amazon Echo is an extremely hospitable addition to the house, and it’s more than just an extra set of speakers. With all of its potential and capabilities, can you imagine a house that utilizes Echo multi room functions? Well, now you can stop dreaming about it, and actually live that glorious thought, because we’ll tell you exactly how you can do that in this post.
What is Amazon Echo?
Before we jump into the Echo Multi Room and its capabilities, you need to know exactly what the Amazon Echo is and what it can do in a single room. I won’t get too detailed since you’ll probably want to jump right into its advantages as a product that affects the whole house rather than just one room, but I’ll try to cover all of the essentials.
In short, Amazon Echo is a cylindrical device that is basically a speaker that serves as a link between you and your smart devices. Basically, you can control things in your room with it (assuming that they are smart objects).
Possibly the greatest feature about the Echo is that it’s voice activated. It incorporates and uses Amazon Alexa, one of the smartest AIs available.
To help you get a better picture, imagine this: you’re lying on your bed, reading your book. It’s getting a bit cold, so you want to adjust the temperature in the room. Not a problem, you simply say “Alexa, raise the temperature to 75 degrees,” and the thermostat adjusts itself.
When you finish your book, you’ll want to go to sleep, but are too cozy to turn off the lights. Alexa to the rescue again. Just command her via Echo to turn off the lights, and sleep is yours. No messing with buttons, touch screens, or switches.
That is the power of the Amazon Echo.
Amazon Echo Multi Room
Now imagine that power in not just one, but multiple rooms. Before, Alexa was only able to focus on one set of speakers at a time. This means that even if you have Echo devices set up throughout the house, Alexa would only be able to focus audio through Echo one at a time per Amazon account.
With the new multi room feature, you can do what you want, when you want, and where you want, even if that means all throughout the house in the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and the bedroom. You can even use Alexa via echo in one room to control an echo in another room!
The easiest way to portray this is to share this example:
You’re in the kitchen grabbing a snack, and about to head to your room. You know you’re going to head up to your room in a bit, so you can say “Alexa, play music in bedroom,” from the kitchen Echo, and music will start playing music in your bedroom. If you want music playing on every echo, simply say “Echo, play music everywhere.” Cool, right? That would literally be the biggest surround sound system at home!
Try not to creep anyone out though! I’d personally be a little frightened if I didn’t know what was going on and music started playing all of a sudden.
Alternatives
In terms of Alexa vs. Google, specifically Amazon Echo vs Google Home, Google Home and Sonos have already been capable of multi room audio, so that puts Amazon a bit behind in the development race. However, It isn’t so far behind that it’s a deciding factor. The multi room feature on the Echo is highly reliable, and the performance is quite similar as well. At this point it’s really just a matter of preference of operating system, or design of the speakers.
As a standalone speaker, the Echo is not the best on the market. While it is fairly decent, there are much better speakers which you can get for an equal or cheaper price and will give you a greater listening experience. But those same speakers won’t have the Alexa capabilities or the link to your smart devices. So if you’re looking to implement Alexa to the best of her ability, pick up the Echo. If you’re simply looking for a way to get your music in the air, go for something else.