Of all the things Alexa Plus can do, I never expected it to make me cry. Since my son left for college, the Echo Show in my office has been making then-and-now photo montages: the toddler with his first tennis racket next to the captain of his varsity team; me hugging him as a tween beside me hugging him as a young man. I\u2019ve teared up more than once. But then comes the ad, a full-screen photo of a hideous brown leather recliner. I go from nostalgic joy to irritation in an instant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That pretty much sums up my year with Alexa Plus. One minute it will do something seriously impressive; the next, it acts like it doesn\u2019t know who I am.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Alexa](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/LR6B5923.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nI\u2019ve been testing Amazon\u2019s AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant<\/a> in my home since July 2025<\/a>, shortly after it launched in early access and ahead of its full launch in February 2026<\/a>. With Google\u2019s rollout of Gemini for Home<\/a> earlier this year, and rumors that Apple is finally bringing the full Apple Intelligence experience to Apple Home this month, now felt like a good moment to review Amazon\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A year in, Alexa Plus is the best smart home assistant I\u2019ve tested: It\u2019s easy to talk to, handles routines and multistep commands, and helps in the kitchen. But Amazon\u2019s attempts to stretch it into a personal<\/em> assistant are underbaked and frustrating, and the ads on the Echo Show smart displays<\/a> are out of control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I tested Alexa Plus with an Echo Show 11<\/a> in my kitchen, Pops<\/a> and Dots<\/a> around my house, and a Show 15<\/a> and 8 in my office. I use voice commands to control my smart home devices, help me with timers and recipes, add events to my calendar and groceries to my shopping list, and occasionally order something from Amazon. I use the screen-based devices as photo frames, for viewing camera feeds, and as touchscreen controllers for my smart home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To get Alexa Plus to work properly for me, I had to rebuild my smart home from scratch<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A lot has improved. Smart home control, routines, general queries, calendar management, and shopping are light-years ahead of pre-AI Alexa, mostly because the new Alexa understands me better. The big promise of LLM-powered voice assistants was the ability to say what you want without using stilted, precise nomenclature. In my testing, that\u2019s proven out. My family uses Alexa more now than they used to, and I like being able to give more general instructions, like \u201cAlexa, make it brighter in here\u201d and \u201cAlexa, I\u2019m cold,\u201d and it knows what to do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s also now faster and more reliable. When I started testing the new assistant, I ran into a litany of issues<\/a>, from misunderstood commands to messed-up routines and very slow responses. Today, questions about the weather or general knowledge and commands like setting a timer execute in three to five seconds, a big change from the 10 to 15 seconds I saw in 2025. When it gets a request wrong the first time, a follow-up now usually fixes it. I can say \u201cLock the front door, turn off the lights, turn down the thermostat, and tell the robot to clean downstairs,\u201d and it happens promptly, without any back talk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexa is also much better at answering questions, especially in the kitchen. Talking with it is easier now that you can speak conversationally and don\u2019t have to repeat the wake word \u2014 but I had to switch to the new Brief personality mode<\/a> after one too many superlatives about my shopping list ( \u201cOooh, that will make for one spicy salsa!).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I recently snapped a picture of my friend\u2019s Dutch baby recipe while in England and sent it to Alexa via the app. When I got home, I asked Alexa to help me cook it; the assistant pulled up the reformatted recipe, and we chatted back and forth easily while I cooked. I could ask, \u201cWhat temperature should I preheat the oven?\u201d and \u201cHow many ounces are 160 grams?\u201d and it would remember we were discussing the recipe and give the right answer. Alexa still sometimes forgets what it\u2019s doing, and getting back to the recipe can be tricky, but it\u2019s the best voice-assistant cooking experience I\u2019ve tested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexa Plus<\/a> is Amazon\u2019s revamped digital assistant powered by generative AI. You can access it by voice through Echo smart speakers and displays, Fire TV, and other Alexa-built-in devices, via the Alexa app<\/a> on smartphones and tablets, and at Alexa.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is free with usage limits on the web and in the app and free to use on Fire TV<\/a>. It requires an Amazon Prime membership<\/a> or a $19.99-a-month subscription for unlimited use and to access on Echo devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexa Plus available in the U.S. and Canada and is in early access in Mexico, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, France, Brazil, Australia, and India. The original Alexa is still available for free on Echo devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve also found Alexa more useful for general knowledge, something it used to be terrible at, and calendar management has become more reliable, too. I can now email and upload documents and photos to Alexa Plus, and it can import events from them into my calendar. I added my daughter\u2019s entire school schedule that way. Shopping is also hugely improved. I uploaded 10 screenshots of sewing supplies from my daughter\u2019s teacher to the Alexa app, and it found all the items and added them to my Amazon cart, saving me a lot of time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My favorite upgrade is creating Alexa smart home routines by voice. I think of something I want my home to do, tell Alexa, and it does it. I wanted the string lights on the porch to turn on when I walk outside; Alexa set up a routine using the motion sensor on the Ring camera. I can also adapt routines on the fly. One night, my daughter came out of her bathroom complaining, \u201cThe lights kept shutting off.\u201d I told Alexa to change the \u201cHallway bathroom light\u201d routine to shut off after 30 minutes instead of 15, and it fixed it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it took a long time to get here. Like many Alexa users, I had a lot of technical debt in my smart home, and as a reviewer, my Alexa app was a graveyard of zombie devices. To get Alexa Plus to work properly for me, I had to rebuild my smart home from scratch, deleting all my old Alexa skills and routines and killing dead and duplicate devices. It took months, literally. I\u2019ve had to re-add 55 Hue devices six times over the past year. And while Alexa has improved, the Alexa app has not. Adding, deleting, and moving multiple devices is still deeply painful, and the app experience is Alexa\u2019s biggest flaw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What I really want is Alexa Plus to manage all that for me so I never have to touch the app. From setting up gadgets to troubleshooting issues, Alexa should be able to put devices in the right room and, if something isn\u2019t working, figure it out. I want it to manage my smart home for me. That is an assistant I would pay money for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While Alexa Plus has made a lot of improvements, there are three big issues, one of which may make you flat-out not want to use the service: ads, inconsistency, and mostly failed attempts at being a personal assistant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Display ads are out of control<\/a>. Every Show device is now a rotating billboard in my home for Amazon goods. Even if you turn off all the homescreen content<\/a> (the rotating screen on the displays), you still get ads interspersed between your photos and the clock. Timing is random; I can see one an hour on the Echo Show 5 in the bedroom and then go a whole day without seeing one on the 11 in my kitchen, but they\u2019re fairly constant on the Show 8 in my office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexa Plus is still inconsistent at executing more complicated requests<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa & Echo at Amazon, tells me these ads are curated and designed to be relevant. \u201cWhen it\u2019s done well, an ad should show up with something useful at just the right moment,\u201d he said. But it hasn\u2019t felt curated to me; among the beauty products, car accessories, snacks, furniture, health supplements, and smart home gear that have assaulted my eyeballs, nothing has been something I wanted to buy. Even worse, Amazon recently added video ads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There is now a fix, but it will cost you: Amazon\u2019s new Photo Gallery Unlimited feature<\/a> removes the ads from the homescreen for $2.99 per month per device. If you don\u2019t want to pay monthly to avoid ads, I would stick with the Echo speakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexa Plus is still inconsistent at executing more complicated requests. This was a big issue in my initial testing and has improved, but not gone away. The shift from the reliable but restricted command-and-control architecture of the old Alexa to the LLM-powered generative AI has introduced a lot of uncertainty<\/a>: Alexa Plus sometimes has to guess at what you want.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For example, Alexa still can\u2019t reliably make a cup of coffee<\/a>. I have an Alexa-capable Bosch 800 Series coffee machine<\/a> with a special integration that gives Alexa more granular controls, including making a specific drink, such as a coffee grande. This works most of the time \u2014 a big improvement over my initial testing. But the other day I asked Alexa to make me a coffee grande, and it replied, \u201cI\u2019d love to, but I\u2019m fresh out of arms and a coffee maker.\u201d I asked again, and it said, \u201cSure, here\u2019s a coffee grinder,\u201d displaying an AI-generated image of a coffee grinder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m not against Alexa doing more for me but the assistant has failed to finish several tasks<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Alexa Plus still struggles with timely information. Asking it when England next played in the soccer World Cup in June almost made me miss kickoff, and last month when I asked what channel an Ohio State\u2013Illinois football game was on, it offered to set up a reminder for a game that had already started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Getting dates and times wrong is not a trait I want in a personal assistant, which is what Amazon is pushing Alexa Plus as. Instead of a stoic, disembodied voice, I\u2019m now greeted every morning by a perky pair of digital hands proffering a cheery emoji and a line like \u201cHey Jen, tell me what I can do for you today?\u201d on the Echo Show in my kitchen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Perkiness aside \u2014 I\u2019m English; we don\u2019t do perky \u2014 I\u2019m not against Alexa doing more for me. It\u2019s just that the assistant has failed to finish several tasks I\u2019ve given it. Most of these new agentic features, including integrations with Thumbtack, OpenTable, and Ticketmaster<\/a>, feel underbaked and mostly a waste of my time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This feature-stuffing is inevitable as Amazon starts charging to use Alexa on Echo devices ($19.99 a month if you aren\u2019t a Prime member) and competes with the AI giants in the agentic space. But nothing is more frustrating than spending time explaining what you want done, only to then have to do it yourself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I tried ordering lunch through Uber Eats on the Echo Show, Alexa confidently told me, \u201cJust tell me what you like, and I\u2019ll find it on the menu as you speak.\u201d That wasn\u2019t the case. Instead, I spent 20 minutes trying to order a Chick-fil-A meal with iced tea, while the Uber Eats interface on the smart display insisted on ordering me a s\u2019mores milkshake I never asked for. Booking an electrician was no better; after 10 minutes dictating my electrical issues to Alexa and going through several Thumbtack sign-up screens, it gave me the electrician\u2019s number to call.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A bigger problem is memory. Alexa has the memory of a goldfish. For a while, it forgot who I was and kept asking me to introduce myself whenever I asked it to do something. Which was frankly rude, since it\u2019s been living in my house for a decade. It\u2019s also supposed to have a feature called Remember This<\/a> that stores information you tell it, similar to the memory features in ChatGPT or Claude.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I told it what school my daughter went to, asked it to remember this, then asked what the traffic was like getting there. It gave the correct answer. But the next day, when I made the same request, it confidently gave me the traffic conditions and travel time to an entirely different school, and it insisted that was the school I\u2019d asked it to remember.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Remembering details about you, your household, and your home is a crucial skill for a personal assistant. If I hired one that sent my daughter to the wrong school, I\u2019d fire them immediately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Amazon already knows a lot about my household, from what I buy to what\u2019s on my shopping list and even what arrives at my front door \u2014 that\u2019s a privacy tradeoff you have to grapple with when using Alexa. What it lacks is the personal context a personal assistant needs. This is where Google and Apple have the lead, and where Amazon has a lot of catching up to do to succeed here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I test all the major smart home assistants, including Google\u2019s Gemini for Home<\/a> and Siri in Apple Home<\/a>, and Alexa is the most reliable and functional for controlling my home. But I\u2019ll turn to Siri to send a text message or Google to get me a traffic-free route to my daughter\u2019s school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With Alexa Plus, Amazon has taken a big step toward the ambient smart home<\/a> the company has imagined for over a decade<\/a>. What it needs to do now is avoid the temptation to become a general-purpose AI bot, and instead focus on becoming the brain for your home \u2014 potentially one you could integrate with your personal AI assistant of choice (something Google is doing with Google Home<\/a>). This would require Amazon to rediscover the openness that defined the platform when it launched in 2014 \u2014 it increasingly feels closed, with features that work only with Amazon\u2019s brands and curated partners. But Alexa remains the biggest mainstream smart home platform, with broad third-party support, a huge install base, and wide support for protocols \u2014 including Matter and Thread.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Where it wins in breadth, however, Alexa lacks in depth. Alexa Plus should be able to control every feature of every device, not just on and off (Amazon recently launched a developer toolkit<\/a> that could help here). Combined with its Omnisense fusion sensor platform<\/a>, announced last year, this could bring it much closer to fully learning and understanding your household\u2019s patterns. With that context, it could suggest proactive routines and start taking action for you \u2014 beyond random hunches every now and then. That\u2019s the next frontier for the smart home, and today Amazon is best poised to overcome it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The smart home assistant I want isn\u2019t the one that can book a restaurant or write an email; it\u2019s the one that understands my home, can manage it for me, and knows when I need a cute baby pic to cheer me up.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy \/ The Verge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAlexa is more reliable in my smart home<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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