Echo Dot (3rd Gen) - Smart speaker with Alexa

Well, I had a very awesome Cyber Monday! Though I only bought one thing, it was definitely a doozy! It is nothing less than Amazon's own smart speaker, connected to one of the best virtual assistants that I have used, Alexa! (I realize now this statement doesn't carry much weight because there's only four major ones, but I will now say that this is the best I've used, due to its ability to do pretty much everything I can think of, and ease of access - I can just talk and it works! (This is also true of Cortana, but Alexa is not dependent on a large, heavy-power-drawing device like a computer running Windows to be usable, so Alexa wins.)Alexa can answer pretty much any question that may come to mind, though there are a few that still haven't occurred to her, but that is fast changing due to crowd-sourced reviews and feedback that are easily provided for every interaction! And that's even before I mentioned the thousands of skills, reminders, timers and routines and all sorts of awesome things that the assistant can do. And all when you say her wake word which just happens to be Alexa (though I am authoring this with a text-to-speech program, I must type the assistant's name to avoid awakening her so many times :) ).The device itself is pretty elegant, as you can see my picture and video. It's grown up quite a bit from the second generation which I have never had, but it is larger and heavier, and has a big old band of cloth around it instead of it being plastic with the Amazon logo. There are four buttons on top: two for adjusting volume, one to perform some kind of action which might actually double for using the wake word; I'm not sure yet, and one to mute the microphones, of which there are four of the far-field variety, which enable the speaker to hear your voice even when it is far away and rather quiet, or when music or other audio is playing through the speaker itself! That's pretty awesome.So many other people have talked about the virtual assistant, Alexa, that I will not waste time here, because I'm mainly here to talk about the speaker itself. And I will close by saying, I'm not really concerned about a proprietary power solution over a USB solution, though I am aware that some inconvenience can exist when one cannot use power adapters one already has. Doesn't affect me, though. And the speaker is actually quite loud, probably potentially the loudest Bluetooth-enabled speaker that I've heard, and sounds wonderful pretty much no matter what is played through it!I most definitely recommend the Amazon Echo Dot third-generation! In your color of choice, though the Sandstone does look very snazzy :-) thank you, Amazon for providing us all a wonderful and affordable entry into the exciting world of virtual assistants and the Alexa infrastructure! I will treasure it forever. And, who knows? I may kit my house out with at least a couple more before holidays are out.(EDIT: As a side note, I just played back the short video I linked above, and Alexa woke up again and gave me several varieties of cheese. She's just that awesome.)