Amazon Echo Tops 26,000 Customer Reviews

The futuristic voice-activated info hub that Amazon calls the Amazon Echo is the #1 selling product at Amazon. Launched this year — coincidentally (or not) on the 30th anniversary of the movie Back To The Future — the Echo has garnered more than 26,000 reviews — many humorous, even more awestruck. (Now there’s an engineering project — can Echo help you read the ones you should, or hear them, that is? Say narrow down the pertinent five from 26,000?)

Ask Alexa, Echo’s brain. But you don’t need to read them all. 88% of Amazon reviewers give the Echo 4-stars or 5-stars. The key to most of the reviews, if you’re thinking of laying down the $180, is this common refrain: “getting better with every update.” And that’s from a 5-star review that already calls the Echo a “SUPERB product. Plays podcasts, music, answers math questions, does your shopping lists.” Notably Echo’s utility — its usefulness — seems to outweigh the slightly scary aspects for users, like the increasingly dominant role of technology in every facet of life. As one reviewer puts it: the echo is “scary but so much fun.”