Echo Auto (1st gen) - Hands-free Alexa in your car with your phone

The worst amazon product ever made. I hate that Amazon fooled me into trying this! I wanted to love it! I wanted to love it so hard! What's with the cords Amazon? Why do you need my cords. I have a bluetooth thing that I use.. why cant you be more like that special plug?First- I sat in my car for nearly 2 hours trying to get this to connect. I dont have bluetooth, so the obvious appeal is that I can now have a wonderful hands-free option, and Alexa to boot! However- 2 hours, and nothing. Blue lights, zero response. Unplugged, replugged, restarted, nothing. I waited for my husband to come home before going postal.When he came to my rescue, I showed him what I had accomplished.. litterally zero, and we started over. Step by step we followed every instruction. Nothing. But then! A random connection! We didnt do anything, but hey.. it's working! For 2 whole min. It kept saying to reconnect you must go to the open the Alexa app (which btw-- does NOTHING!) I'd have to restart my phone for any sort of connection to reoccur. We basically called it a wash and said we would be returning it the next day.Next day- how random that as I'm driving down the road it connects and works for a good 30 min.. and I'm loving it and me and alexa are cruising along with Spotify as our wingman. I ask for directions, and I'm on my way. This is awesome... until midfreeway and alexa disconnects on me again.. says to pullover to open the alexa app to restart. I cant.. I'm doing 70 in the fastlane and now in the verge of being lost. I get off at the next exit. Once again its prompting me to go to the alexa app to restart. Why? Why amazon do you keep telling me to do this?I'll say it again. The Alexa app does nothing to reconnect the device. ( And trying to get it back online without wanting to smash it is a feat!)I restart my phone again, and were back in business. For seemingly a good solid 30min, until I arrive at my destination and turn off my car.I should not have to restart everything in my vehicle including my phone to get this epic POS to connect everytime I want to enter my car or use it!Now- that being said. If you have bluetooth already- you may less issues. I really dont know if that grass is greener. You'll have at least one less cord hanging from your dash though.My 2 cords and my little cord keeper-- sigh-- the cord keeper fell off on day 2. This made my dash look messy and it was kinda nightmarish. I worried how I'd charge my phone, how I'd switch to radio or do anything without upsetting the mighty auto connection. It was like walking on eggshells.I ultimately returned her. I was sad. It broke my heart. It felt like Amazon tricked me. Heck- who didnt want to try this? Me!! I did! I still would if Amazon could come up with something 85% better than this corded, disconnected, heap o crap.Do you hear me amazon? We love our echos. But this? This is shameful. Save your money until they can make it bug free

At the time I put in for an invite for this device, I was frustrated with Siri hands-free. It couldn’t summon pandora or amazon music, and simple tasks like checking store hours and getting navigation were hit or miss. Fast forward to a couple weeks back when I finally got my echo auto, and boy does this product make Siri look great.The first issue you’ll notice is that Echo Auto isn’t always ready to go when the car starts, often for the first few minutes she’ll report she’s lost connection with the app and can’t respond right now. Admittedly this is probably because the iPhone paged out the Alexa app, but it would be nice if the echo auto announced when she is ready rather than leaving me to make the same query over and over again until it works.Navigation is also atrocious. In my short time with Echo Auto, I’ve discovered that asking Alexa to “navigate to <business>” often doesn’t result in directions, but instead either gets me traffic info or a suggestion to enable video skills in my library. Specifically asking Alexa to “get directions to <business>” seems to work okay, but since Alexa uses third party nav apps, on iPhone I often need to click a notification to get started with nav (and since iOS blocks notifications while driving, this means unlocking the phone). To make matters worse, if Alexa misheard you and puts the wrong destination into nav, she can’t cancel it directly and tells you to unlock the phone and cancel nav manually in the nav app. The entire point of an audio assistant in the car is to be hands free, so I consider echo auto nav fundamentally broken.Other issues: customer support can be pretty clueless, suggesting things like lowering radio volume and ambient noise if echo auto misheard you (even though echo auto is the thing playing stuff through the radio, and there’s going to be road, wind, engine, and hvac noise in a car...). Also it’s irksome that the Auto is powered by usb but can’t send audio over usb to the car.Now some of these complaints may seem minor, and Alexa’s always improving, but the trouble is so is her competition. With ios13, I can now say “hey Siri, play pandora” and it works! “Hey Siri” also works great for nav and other info, and she can more reliably hear me in the car. I’m guessing Google Assistant can do all this too. So the fundamental question is why would anyone pay $50 for an Echo Auto when their smartphone can already do everything the Auto does but better?

This thing doesn't work worth a whit. IF you can get it connected to your vehicle's system, enjoy while it lasts -- that may be the last time that it will work. Turn off the engine and you have to go thru the setup process -- over, and over, and over again. I don't have the wherewithal, patience, or inclination to screw around with this thing for an hour every time I start the car. Setup seems straight forward, but (for me) has to be repeated many times over before it takes hold and starts to work. this will be going back to Amazon Mo-Rikki-Tic...

I was able to get my Auto as part of an invite. I was super excited to try it out. The first time I connected to my car via Bluetooth, it worked pretty well. But after that, not so much. Alexa kept telling me that she couldn't connect to my phone...over and over and over again. Finally one day I spent about an hour trying to figure this little bugger out. I got it to connect again. *whew* But now Alexa won't answer me. I'm pretty sure she hates me and is going to ignore me for the rest of my life. I chose to mount the Auto with the vent clip, seemed fine to me. But during a road trip on the highway going 65, the Auto fell off and landed under my feet. Probably not the safest thing to happen. I chucked the vent clip into my glove box. Not the Auto sits in a little cubby right near the radio. She still ignores me there too. I wouldn't buy this again, not even for the discounted price.