Echo Glow Smart Lamp for Kids

This was recently given to me as a gift. It is a good device, not great, with some shortcomings. Yes, it is made in China, says that right on the bottom of the device. Hopefully many of these are software issues that will improve with future updates. Out of the box, it is an attractive light with a quality feeling glass dome, so be careful that it doesn’t get dropped and broken, especially when being used by chilldren. The power cord is a shiny white cord and plug that looks like something from the Apple universe, and it also has a large tag that has to be cut off, or annoyingly left in place. I had to be careful not to nick the power cord when cutting it off. I guess if this cord needs a warning, then every corded device that a person can buy needs a warning. And in order to activate the device, I had to go online, sign an Amazon electronic consent form, and enter my credit card CVV code, or it would not let me use the device. Since Amazon already has my credit card information, this was not so much a financial privacy issue, as just annoying. They do this because the device is marketed to children, but to my knowledge, a lot of toys can be bought on line from Amazon without signing consent forms. Maybe it was just put there on advice of Amazon’s legal team. I wondered if they want a consent form for seizure prone children, maybe because the light can be made to flash different colors, as in Disco mode, or flicker, as in Campfire mode? If so, I did not see a seizure warning on the consent form. Set up is fairly easy, and the instructions are included in the box. I set it up from the app, not from a Amazon Echo device; the app was fast and easier. For my other WiFi enable lightbulbs, I just needed to say “Alexa, set up my WiFi devices,” and they all worked. That did not work with the Glow, but using the app was fast. The Glow does not have a microphone, so it doesn’t take voice commands. The first and most difficult problem is that frequently, and this is very frequently, the Glow loses the WiFi Connection. Commands are frequently and intermittently responded to by “Sorry, ‘Glow’ is not responding,” if you name the device Glow. I tried different names for the device, none of the names affected this intermittent non-responding problem. If I wait one minute, it might work again without doing anything different, then a minute later, it may or may not respond again. Even when it loses the WiFi connection, the tap function and the switch on the back still work. The WiFi connection can be reset by going through the setup function again with the Alexa app, but this is time consuming and frustrating, and then the device will work for a few minutes, then start losing the connection again. It could be that the WiFi connection is weak for this device, but at least where I have it set up, there is an Echo Plus and an Echo Tap nearby, and it is only about 40 feet from the router, and the other devices continue to work fine while the Glow loses the connection. The Echo Plus is just inches away and almost never loses the connection. In addition, I have found that unplugging the device, and plugging it back in and waiting half a minute generally will reset the connection as well. This is faster than going through the app. I would be curious to see if this is just the device I received, or if it is a problem with others as well. The light is not very bright. It functions fine for entertainment for kids, (it is marketed for this purpose, so this is not a negative) but the kids get tired of it after a few minutes. It works as a night light, haven’t had it long enough to see if it fails due to losing the WiFi connection, but the first night it worked fine. It can be set to augment an alarm to wake up in the morning, but for the most part it should be set to white light and maximum brightness, and even then, probably should have a traditional alarm right next to it, because it is not likely to be bright enough to rouse most people from sleep. When it is in a color mode, it is even less bright, as is to be expected for the most part. It can work fairly well for mood lighting in an otherwise dim room. The timer works fine, but again since it frequently loses the WiFi connection, it may be frustrating to set the timer. Regarding software updates, like with all Amazon devices, some of these may improve with future new hardware generations of the product, and it is not always clear that older products will be supported with future software releases. Sometimes this is due to limitations of the old hardware. Sometimes there is the maddening suspicion that the limits on software updates for older hardware is a way to force consumers to give up on old hardware and purchase new hardware. This occurs with Apple, Amazon, and many other devices. However at least with Amazon, the devices are usually much more economically priced, and the value for the product sometimes make it worthwhile to upgrade the hardware. All in all, it is a nice device; it would be better if the WiFi connectivity issue was not there. It is a reasonable first iteration and inexpensively priced, though maybe priced higher than some similar devices that are not in the Echo/Alexa family. Not certain I would buy another, but if the WiFi connectivity is fixed, and if future lights are a little larger and brighter, I think its niche could be expanded and it will become more popular. For example, I could see a lot of people wanting an Alexa enable device such as this, and paying more for it, if it was larger, brighter, had an onboard Alexa enabled speaker, and could be used as a morning wake up timer to gradually fill the room with light, especially for those living in Northern climes where it is darker in the morning and darker for more of the day. Unfortunately, it is not there yet.