What’s the best combination of Alexa devices for your house? – CNET

It’s time to think big picture now that we’ve reviewed all three devices with Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant. What if you want to roll out Alexa to every room in your house?

A quick refresher: Alexa is the speech-recognition technology built into Amazon’s Dot, Echo and Tap smart speakers. Alexa is programmed to respond to a wide variety of voice commands. She can tell you the weather or the news, she can add an event to your calendar or you can use her to make a shopping list. Alexa can play music from streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora and, of course, Amazon Prime. She can also control an impressive list of smart-home devices. Thanks to an aggressive expansion plan from Amazon, Alexa gets support for new products and digital services weekly.

Meet the Alexa Family

• Amazon Echo: The original $180 Alexa device has a robust speaker for playing music, and an impressive wide array microphone that’s always listening. Say the wake word “Alexa,” even from the next room, and the Echo will hear you and respond.

• Amazon Echo Dot:The $90 Dot is one of two new members to the family. It’s essentially an Echo with the speaker chopped off and an added audio output port and a Bluetooth radio. It’s still always listening, and it will still play music on its own, but the sound quality is more like that of a smartphone. Thanks to the audio output and Bluetooth, you can connect it to your own speakers or home entertainment system.

• Amazon Tap: The third member of the Alexa family, the $130 Tap trades always-listening convenience for battery-powered portability. You have to hit a button to talk to the Tap, so you don’t need to use the Alexa wake word, but you still have access to all the same Alexa functionality once you start talking. The lightweight Tap can work like a typical, portable Bluetooth speaker. Connect it to the internet and it can stream music and let you use Alexa on the go.

In addition, Amazon has two other Alexa-related products:

• Voice Remote for the Amazon Echo: A $30 Bluetooth remote that connects to your Echo or Echo Dot, allowing you to give commands beyond standard listening range. You need to push the button on the remote to talk. It does not work with the Tap.

• Fire TV Voice Remote: Included in the $50 Fire TV stick bundle or as part of the full-sized $85 Fire TV, it allows you to control your TV with Alexa with the push of a button, similar to the Tap or the Voice Remote. It only works with your TV, so I won’t address this device when discussing how to best outfit your home with Alexa.

How Alexa devices work together

It’s surprisingly easy to add multiple Alexa devices to a single Amazon account. The Amazon Alexa app for iOS and Android walks you through the process. If you sync control of any smart home devices to one Echo unit, any other Echo products tied to the same account will also recognize them.

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The Tap and the Dot make a compelling combo.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Thanks to an audio line-in on the Tap and the magic of Bluetooth, you can link the Tap to the Dot either over a cable or wirelessly. This combination gets you the better speakers and the portability of the Tap with the always-listening Alexa feature via the Dot. Buying both the Dot and Tap will cost $220, $40 more than a single Echo, but it gives you a more flexible set up with portability when you need it — and always-on Alexa convenience when you don’t.

Another way to extend Alexa is a single Echo and a Voice Remote. That will cost $210 and it will give you the best speaker of the set, plus an Alexa contact point in one room. The Voice Remote uses Bluetooth, and the range proved extensive when we tried it out in the CNET Smart Home. I placed an Echo on the top floor, went two floors down into the basement, and the Echo still responded to my command.

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The Voice Remote works with either the Echo or the Dot.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The most affordable way to extend Alexa to multiple rooms is to buy the Echo Dot and extend it with the Remote. That setup will cost $120. This makes sense if you already have a speaker system for the Dot, or if you don’t care about using Alexa for music streaming.

Alexa out of sync

Although adding multiple devices to your Alexa app is seamless, you can’t combine two Echo devices to create a stereo or surround sound audio setup like you can with Sonos speakers. In fact, putting two Alexa devices too close together can be annoying.

If you tell the Echo in your kitchen to play a song, the Dot in your living room might also hear the command, and then you get both speakers playing the same tune, but without syncing up. That means you have to think strategically if you want to set up Alexa in always-listening mode throughout your home.

The guidelines below will help you plan for complete coverage with minimal overlap, but if you want always-listening Echoes closer together, you can program them with different wake words in the settings of the app. “Alexa” is the most popular, but you can also use “Echo” or “Amazon.”

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Recommended setup by house size

As always with planning out a smart home set up, your best bet is to start small with one or two Alexa devices to see how you and your family will really use them. Build out only once you get a feel for them.

Small homes, apartments (one floor; up to 1,000 square feet)

One always-listening Alexa device should cover it. Put either an Echo or an Echo Dot in a central spot in the room you inhabit most often, and you’ll rarely be out of shouting distance. Both can pick up your voice through one closed door. Buy a Voice Remote if you have lots of interior doors, or to minimize yelling.

Space constraints will make it hard for multiple people to issue commands to two always-on Alexa devices without stepping on each other’s toes. If you need a second speaker, use a Tap to minimize overlapping commands.

Medium homes (one to two floors; 1,000 to 2,500 square feet)

How to make the most of Alexa

• How to craft custom Alexa commands using IFTTT
• How to set up a recurring alarm with Alexa
• How to fix connectivity issues with the Amazon Echo

Most of the time, one Echo or Dot will be sufficient if you place it in a central room in a medium-sized home. If you feel the need to provide one or more of your kids with an Alexa device for playing music, use a Tap. You can also use a Tap to take with you to work in the garage or out to the patio. Use a Voice Remote for any peripheral areas where you don’t care about music, but you still want to issue commands to Alexa.

If you want a more general rule of thumb, plan to put two walls, two doors or one floor between your Echoes or Dots to avoid conflicting commands. Those wide-array microphones are great most of the time, but they can also be frustrating if you have multiple family members who want to play their own music at the same time.

Large homes (two floors plus; more than 2,500 square feet)

Follow the same rule of thumb as for medium homes. In general, you’ll want to keep it to one Echo or Dot per floor. If you have a wide home, you should be fine setting up an Echo in your living room and a Dot in your family room as long as two to three walls separate the two spaces.

You might also need to strike a balance between the hearing range of the Echo or the Dot when it’s quiet and when you’re playing music or you have the TV on. Alexa’s effective listening range shrinks proportionally to the volume of any background noise. It gets worse for those with quiet voices.

The best way to mitigate the problem is with the Voice Remote. Place an Echo in the living room at one end of your main floor. Hook a Dot into the entertainment center at the other end, then place a Voice Remote in any areas in between and you’ll always be able to give voice commands.

As with medium homes, the Tap is a good solution for anyone who wants a different music choice in a room close to an always-listening device. And in general, Taps are better for moving between garages, patios and areas where you only want to play music on occasion, though it’s not too much of a hassle unplugging and replugging the Echo or the Dot.