Echo Plus (1st Gen) with Built-In Hub (Scratch & Dent)

We purchased our first Echo in November of 2014, 3 years ago this month. She was the hit of our Thanksgiving dinner celebration that year but could do only a fraction of what she is capable of today. We added smart bulbs like the Philips Hue white and colored bulbs, GE Link and TP Link bulbs, smart plugs, smart wall switches, and smart device timers. We added them over the years as they became available on Amazon. (And on sale!) We had to purchase hubs to run the Philips and GE bulbs when we first started adding bulbs. The 1st Gen Philips hub worked well for about a year and then started having problems with disconnecting from the network and not playing nice with Alexa. Philips finally replaced it under warranty. The Wink hub which controlled the GE bulbs has always worked flawlessly. But whenever we changed our network password, we had to go around and reset all the bulbs, often having to re-register some of them and then go into the Alexa app and have her rediscover them. Perhaps not a big deal when you’re only using a couple bulbs, but a real time waster when almost every bulb in a large 2 story house is a smart bulb. This Echo Plus allowed me to disconnect the hubs and control everything with Alexa alone. She didn’t discover the bulbs right away. I had to go in and deregister them from their hubs and then rediscover them and add them to the Plus. But now they work flawlessly. Let me tell you how I did that. In your Alexa app, click on the little menu thingie in the upper left hand corner which will open a drop down menu. Select Smart Home from the menu. You’ll see a page showing devices, groups and scenes. Click on the little ? In the upper right hand corner. This will open a page with instructions and clickable commands for deregistering a list of different devices from their hubs and having Alexa discover and connect them to the Echo Plus. It’s a little bit of a pain to have to go around and get serial numbers off the bulbs or turn others on and off, but you only have to do it once, then Alexa has them. And it isn’t difficult. No more running upstairs to push the button on the Philips hub to get bulbs to respond. No more extra hubs sitting around consuming electricity. And no more dealing with the clunky Philips Hue app (If you don’t believe me, go read the reviews for that app.) Now that everything is connected through Alexa, I have set up Routines to turn a few of our lights on and off and specified times. (Voice commands can still be used to override a routine and they don’t interfere with your routine the next time it is scheduled.) I can also turn them on and off remotely from the Alexa app. I have a routine set for our kitchen Alexa so that when I say, “Alexa, good morning” she will turn on one of the kitchen smart bulbs at 50% brightness and the other at 100% brightness and read me the local weather report. Our bedroom Alexa has a routine that is triggered when I say “Alexa, start my day”. She turns on one of the lights at 20% and reads my morning news flash. How cool is that? Here’s how you set up a routine: 1. Go to the menu and select "Routines." 2. Select the + icon. From here, you can specify when Alexa will do something, and what it will do. -- Select "When this happens" to pick a scheduled time for the Routine to run, or enter a word or phrase that will activate it. -- Select "Add action" to select what the Routine will run. You can add multiple actions, one at a time. -- Once you have selected a “cue” and an action, select the device you want the Routine to play on. -- Select "Create" to save the routine. Groups are also a great feature. You can Group your Echo and Dot device’s together in a group, give the group a name, and then tell Alexa, “Play my <Bruno Mars> playlist on my <downstairs> group. She instantly starts to play it on all the devices in the group. You could also play a single song or a radio station like iHeart or Pandora. We have a large family room/kitchen combo with the Plus on a desk about midway in the room and a Dot connected by 3.5mm Cable to a Heos speaker, with excellent sound. We put the two in a group. The sound is amazing! It’s better than stereo, especially with the new Plus. The Plus is slightly stronger on the treble than the 1st Gen Echo. The Heos is strong on bass. They sync perfectly with each other and never miss a beat. BTW, I rarely used the Heos except for parties before we got the Dot because I was so spoiled by controlling music by voice on our Echo. It was much better than using an app to control the Heos. Now the Heos is used all the time since I can use it with Alexa. Grouping with the Plus makes it that much better. We can also add Echos in other rooms to the group, which we do when we have people over. We can now have the same music playing in the living room/dining room as in the family room. They are easily added-or subtracted in the Alexa app. Like the regular Echo, this Plus can control all of our white bulbs and the the Hue color bulb by voice, including changing the colors to any color I can think of (pink, teal, red, blue, purple, aqua, etc.) dimming to any percentage and on/off and adding them to routines or group. For example, I can say, “Turn on the downstairs lights” and Alexa will turn on every light I’ve added to that group. The Plus controls our smart plugs and switches just like the regular Echo did and we add those to groups as well. Bulbs, switches and plugs can be a part of several different groups. (The group Holiday lights turned on all the LED lighted pumpkins and orange lights on our banisters when we said, “Alexa, turn on the holiday lights.” We can also use this Plus like the other Echos, to Drop In on our other rooms. Since we have Echos in just about every room we now have a home intercom system that works beautifully. We’ve watched Alexa get smarter and smarter almost weekly, from that first day with her 3 years ago. I have no doubt that she will continue learn new skills to make our lives even easier and more fun. (Did I mention that she can switch our older LG TV to PlayStation Vue streaming through our Amazon Fire TV device and start and pause shows by voice through either the Echos or Fire TV remote? Yeah, we dumped our satellite TV provider and now pay less than half with live and recorded streaming. But that’s for another review!)