Giving voice commands to your wireless earbuds isn’t new. Several earphone makers have weaved it in some form or the other, but a few work better than many others. Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and maybe even Apple’s Siri, can be invoked with voice commands. Yet, none has come close to the sort of integration and instantaneous experience that Amazon has weaved into the latest generation Echo Buds. But does it really add value?
It is a pleasant surprise to see the Alexa virtual assistant work exactly how it does on Echo smart speakers, Fire TV devices and in the Alexa smartphone app. The width of capabilities gets replicated as is. On the Amazon Echo Buds, commands are the same – great – if you’re already familiar with what you need to say to play music on Apple Music or Spotify, smart home controls, weather and news updates and even making phone calls.
