Alexa plus. Anyone else got it and find it effectivly worthless?

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Alexa plus. Anyone else got it and find it effectivly worthless?

richms

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#323955 7-Feb-2026 19:36

So it finally offered it to me a few days ago, when I was at the supermarket wanting to open the app to see my new world list so I rushed thru all its intro stuff. Its now enabled but for all I do, the only thing I have noticed is the voice is different, and its SO DAMN SLOW. Is there some killer feature I am missing? Everything I use alexa for which is turning lights on and off, dimming lights, adding things to the shopping list and asking for unit conversions when watching american youtubers using stupid units is all pretty much the same, and when I have asked it more complex things that it failed on in the past, it still fails.

The new layout on the screen one seems like it could be useful if I was to bother to configure it. But I have put all that energy into configuring layouts on HA so am not bothering to do it again to get a subset of devices on there.

Richard rich.ms

ascroft

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#3459580 7-Feb-2026 19:49

I didn’t think it was available outside the US yet?

I am kind of interested in it but not going to pay for it if the new Siri works well. Not sure why many people would pay for Amazon plus if they have an iPhone.

"Artificial Intelligence" - aka Machine Learning 2.0

richms

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#3459581 7-Feb-2026 19:54

My account is from before they had regions so has remained set to the US, Its free with amazon prime, and I pay for prime there which has not had a lot of use recently because of the poor dollar because it was getting free faster shipping to the reshipper. Now that things also are a lot more shipping overseas from there at not terrible prices (in many cases free for a certain order size) the prime will probably not make it past the next renewal unless things improve for the NZ dollar.

Richard rich.ms

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#3459707 8-Feb-2026 10:33

I've found Alexa in the last few months is slow and never has an answer for me. Even asking it simple questions its always "Sorry I cant answer that". Only things that seem to work is weather and playing music.

XPD / Gavin

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#3459723 8-Feb-2026 12:02

Standard Alexa is useful for looking up basic facts and setting timers, not much more. Haven't tried plus, not worth paying for for us.

networkn

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#3459734 8-Feb-2026 12:38

Alexa has taken a real dive recently. There was a post on Reddit from an ex Developer who tried to stand up for the ensh!tifcation of it, and was put on a PIP and fired.

It's all about driving interaction now, and honestly, our one sits in the kitchen and bedrooms and mostly handles timers, alarms and the odd conversion of some measurement to another or a weather report.

Even getting it to play music these days is hit and miss.

Actually we also use it to add food to Grocery lists and control our lights.

When I think about it, it's actually very useful.