Voice controlled speakers are amazing. With this type of name it is easy to think they just play music on command from your voice, but in fact they are a lot more.

With a device such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, you can literally control your other device such as lights, computers, television, locking systems and air-conditioners from the comfort of your lounge by voice, or while driving in your car.

For the most part we have played a lot more with Amazons Alexa echo and dot systems, over the Google Home. There just seem to be a lot more compatible devices around and more option in my experience right now. And again, for the most part it has worked very well.

However, we still find quirks in the system and the main problems seem to be as follows:

Wireless Connectivity Problems

Although your voice controlled system wont be able to tell you why it cant connect to a device, its pretty easy to diagnose with a little messing around.

Most of the time we have found it is not the actual Google Home or Alexa Echo/Dot system which is connected to the internet that is the problem.

It is usually the corresponding device it is trying to talk to, like lights or smart switch. An easy fix for this is to move the device closer to your wireless access point or wireless router/modem.

But, a lot of the time this is not possible. So what you could try is maybe moving the wireless access point closer to the devices or more central in your home or business. If this is not an option either you can always buy wireless repeaters which boost your wireless signal between the wireless modem and devices having problems connecting.

Sound Problems and Position

Another problem we constantly find is not so much your speaker system does not understand you personally, but due to its position has problems hearing you correctly.

We have found simply moving your speakers even 20 centimeters from a wall behind it can greatly improve its performance and enable it to understand you a lot better.

Skills Need to be Reloaded

With the Amazon Echo sometimes we have noticed that sometimes functions stop working such as the ability to control the Xbox system.

Simply reloading the skill will fix most problems. I mention the Xbox specifically because we find that to be the most problematic device. There are literally hundreds of forums and threads dedicated to talking about this problem.

But at the end of the day it is really hit and miss. Every side seems to be blaming the other, but in the end reloading the skill seems to work the best.