David Pogue’s Alexa+ review argues that Amazon has shipped an ambitious voice assistant before it is ready for the work it promises to do. In a post published Aug. 3, Pogue said Alexa+ completed only about half of 135 tasks he gave it. That is one reviewer’s test, not an independently replicated reliability measure, but the examples show where the system broke down for him.
Pogue tested a new 11-inch Echo Show that Amazon loaned him. He said many of his prompts came from Amazon’s own “50+ things to try with Alexa+” marketing material, and that he filmed the session. He later summarized the result on X as “just under half” of the requests handled correctly.
Amazon’s Alexa+ is the upgraded AI voice service, while Echo is the hardware it runs on. Pogue wrote that it works on Echo Show devices, recent screenless Echo Dot models, the Alexa app and some Fire TV products. As reported in his review, the service was included with a $15-a-month Prime membership or sold separately for $20 a month.
What did David Pogue’s Alexa+ review find?
Pogue found that Alexa+ performed capably on some open-ended, chatbot-like requests. He said it returned useful answers to questions including a train-planning request, and he successfully used voice controls to request an Uber trip to Grand Central Terminal, select a vehicle type and confirm it.
Those successes sit beside failures in tasks where an assistant needs to preserve context and accurately know its own interface. Pogue said Alexa+ gave him instructions for finding his command history in the Alexa app that pointed to menu items that were not present. He reported that the correct route was through the top-left menu icon and then “Chats.”
In another documented test, Pogue tried to order from a restaurant through Grubhub. Alexa+ repeatedly asked him to choose between Grubhub and Uber Eats even after he had selected Grubhub. The assistant eventually said it would use Grubhub, then repeated the same choice prompt, according to the review.
What is Alexa+ supposed to do?
Amazon says Alexa+ can answer conversational questions and take actions through spoken commands, including smart-home control, calendar changes, restaurant reservations, concert-ticket purchases and ride bookings, Pogue wrote. It can also connect to services including Uber, Grubhub, OpenTable and Ticketmaster, subject to users linking their accounts.
That is the hard part of the pitch: an AI assistant has to do more than generate a plausible sentence. It must correctly interpret a request, use the right connected service and carry the transaction through without inventing app controls or forgetting a selection made moments earlier.
Pogue also reported problems while connecting his own services and devices, including Ecobee thermostats, Ring cameras, Sonos speakers, a Sony TV, iCloud, Gmail, Uber and Grubhub. His conclusion was sharply negative, describing Alexa+ as unfinished despite the potential of hands-free access to those services.
The available evidence does not include a response from Amazon or independent testing of Pogue’s 135-request set. His test therefore establishes what occurred during his review, rather than how Alexa+ will perform for every customer or configuration.
This story draws on original reporting from Daring Fireball.
