Tech for Luddites

I’ve had an Amazon Echo for quite a while and earlier this year I got a first-generation Echo Dot (and have a second-generation Dot on order) so I have a pretty good sense of what they are and how they work. What I didn’t have until quite recently was an Amazon Tap, the company’s battery-powered Bluetooth speaker with Alexa support.

NOTE: For some reason I can’t understand, Amazon doesn’t classify the Tap as a version of the Echo. It doesn’t even come up in the Echo Department on their website. This seems to me to be one of those things that makes sense to the company’s product marketing team but is just confusing to us “regular people.” I would have named the product the Echo Tap, but weirdly nobody from Amazon asked me… 🙂

Anyway, I decided I should get one so I could write about it with first-hand experience and I’m really glad I did for one reason in particular. Even though I’d seen the product on the Amazon website many times, I thought the Tap was just slightly smaller than the Echo. So I was really surprised when I got it and there’s quite a big difference in the size (height and diameter) and weight. I can really see now how much easier it is to take it places with you.

You’ll see the difference clearly in the video below. The video is less than four minutes long and just focuses on what I think are the three biggest differences between the two products: audio quality, portability, and interaction methods.

There are other differences as well; for example, you can connect devices to the Tap with an audio cable. You can find complete specs and customer reviews for both the Echo and the Tap at Amazon.

You may also be interested in:

Amazon Echo: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Amazon Echo Updates, September 2016

Amazon Alexa: What Is It and What Can You Do With It?