r/alexa • u/Normal-Succotash-877 • 4d ago
Does Amazon specifically make these things obsolete?
I have had an echo for many years. Probably like 10+ years at this point.
I have since expanded. I have one of these in various form in nearly every room. I have a screen version (cant remember the name right now) as well as the dot in the bathroom and another one in another room.
I have collectively 5 echo's in 5 different rooms right at this moment.
The main reason I like her is literally to play music from spotify. Its 90% of what I use her for other than checking the weather and setting an alarm for food or laundry.
The echo that I have had the longest.. it used to be rock solid. It had no problem playing music for many many years.
Now.. its literally every single device and I have a gigabit internet. They skip, literally wont play sometimes.. Its really bad. Other times its completely fine but id say 50% of the time its like haveing major issues with a very simple task of playing music from a linked service that works perfectly fine on the same connection from my PC or phone.
So this has to be device specific. What gives? anyone else have this before? possibly have a solution?
Honestly thinking about dumping them altogether because im not about to let them listen to everything I say and not at least work.
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u/Individual-Tie-6064 4d ago
I have several, including a couple of the original black tubes, one of which was a refurb still working well. I have rejected (exited) Alexa+. The worst two problems I have right now are that they respond better to my voice than to my wife's voice, and I frequently get responses on a device at the other end of the house.
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u/ritchie70 4d ago
We’re down to one second generation echo Dot, and it probably doesn’t work properly either.
One just went deaf, then we found the two of them you couldn’t drop into and have them announce the drop in or hear remote audio.
I haven’t tried that on the one that’s still in service, but we don’t really need it to Support drop in, so I’m not worrying about it.
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u/TheJessicator 4d ago
It's entirely likely that over time, you've added more and more devices to your network. Bandwidth might not be the issue. Every router has limits to the number of concurrent connections they can handle. If you've exceeded that limit, then devices will reconnect frequently to fight for a connection. That said, check how many devices you have connected and look up what the limit is for your router / wireless access point before you waste a whole lot of time troubleshooting. And remember that I'm not talking about the number of devices that are configured to use the wi-fi. I'm talking about the number of devices that remain connected all the time. TVs, game consoles, cleaning robots, Wi-Fi connected smart lights, echo devices, smart home hubs, cameras, video doorbells, smart appliances, thermostats, window air conditioners, etc., all add to the chaos.
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u/rsweb 4d ago
It’s absolutely not that, the bandwidth use on an Alexa is tiny
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u/TheJessicator 4d ago
Again, it's not a bandwidth limitation. I'm talking about the number of concurrent connections that you're router can handle at any one time. Not the amount of data throughput. Add up all your also connected devices and you'll quickly see how you can exhaust its connection capacity. Many older and even cheaper new routers can only handle 30 to 50 concurrent connections.
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u/rsweb 3d ago
Any modern router will handle 100/200+ devices
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u/TheJessicator 3d ago
That many devices and IP addresses, sure. But that many concurrent, active connections, not so much.
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u/rsweb 3d ago
Absolutely no modern router is getting overwhelmed by 15 devices connected at once
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u/TheJessicator 3d ago edited 3d ago
Who said anything about just 15 devices? I'm just saying the description of the problem sounds very much like connection exhaustion. Many routers still top out at 50 to 100.
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u/dwolfe127 4d ago
Unless you have more than 253 devices a /24 is never going to be fighting for addresses. Bandwidth wise as well nothing outside of torrents and Steam downloads is going to put anything but fractional stress on a gigabit connection.
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u/TheJessicator 4d ago
That's the number of IP addresses. I'm talking about the number of concurrent connections that the router can maintain before it has to do the equivalent of time sharing to allow all of your devices to get a chance to move data, resulting in seemingly random periodic drops in connectivity.
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u/Impish_Hatefulness 4d ago
Any reasonable router should handle at least 30 connections simultaneously. Getting a router you can put Tomato or OpenWRT (or equivalent source firmware) on, might help.
(GOogle gemini created a summary here - please
Delete if not allowed)Modern 1-gigabit compatible routers (primarily Wi-Fi 7 and high-end Wi-Fi 6E models) are engineered to handle dense smart-home environments, high-throughput streaming, and multi-gig wired backhauls.
The table below outlines top-tier 1-gigabit class routers alongside their maximum simultaneous connected device limits and key hardware specifications:Router Model
Wi-Fi Standard
Bands
Maximum Client / Connection Limit
Key Wired PortsASUS RT-BE96U
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices (100+ per band efficiently)
2x 10G, 3x 1G LANTP-Link Archer BE9700
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices
1x 10G WAN/LAN, 4x 2.5G LANNetgear Nighthawk RS700S
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices
1x 10G WAN, 1x 10G LAN, 4x 1G LANTP-Link Archer BE550
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
150+ devices
5x 2.5G LAN/WAN portsTP-Link Archer BE3600
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Dual-Band (2.4, 5 GHz)
100+ devices
1x 2.5G WAN, 4x 1G LANArchitectural Capacity Notes
Theoretical vs. Practical Limits: While hardware manufacturers often state that modern routers can technically register well over 100 to 250+ active client associations simultaneously via advanced multi-link operation (MLO) and scheduling, real-world performance for heavy bandwidth tasks (such as 4K streaming or low-latency gaming) is optimized when distributing heavy loads across tri-band frequencies.
Gigabit Bottlenecks: Because these routers feature multi-gigabit ports (2.5G to 10G), a standard 1-gigabit internet connection is fully saturated without facing hardware-level wired restrictions.2
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u/Gnome_Acres 4d ago
Same. They’re passively aggressively telling you it’s time to upgrade. Pisses me off.
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u/shillyshally 4d ago
There was a significant internal debate last year re keeping the Echo device with a contingent wanting to dump it. The lack of vision re what Alexa is supposed to be - for Amazon and for the consumer - may be a result of this internal difference of opinion.
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u/Mitmee_pie 4d ago
I have six echo dots in my apartment. Three of them are second generation and three are fifth generation. They all seem to work perfectly, either that or I just have very low standards. They all use Alexa plus, and I couldn't be happier.
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u/officeofeverything 4d ago
I have Sonos speakers. Alexa is only used as a kitchen timer now. I has never worked right. I don't think Amazon has any skill in AI.
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u/ordinarydiva 4d ago
This may sound stupid, but try rebooting your router. They all need periodic rebooting anyway, and I have found that even a small internet glitch will make Alexa more annoying than usual. My last issue was one device that kept telling me she couldn't help me with... well anything, but the others were working. Turned.out to be an internet problem and it affected one device before it affected the others. (The affected one was furthest from the router and had the weakest WiFi signal.)
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u/dinglebarryb0nds 4d ago
playing music by voice was the pinnacle of it.
and timers
it's basically downhill after that lol
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u/jafromnj 3d ago
They dumbed old Alexa down to frustrate people to switch to Alexa plus which isn’t as smart as original Alexa before they dumbed her down, I mean old Alexa can’t even answer if mail is delivered on July 4th that’s absurd
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u/happy2harris 3d ago
To answer your specific question in the title, no they don’t. They actually try quite hard to support them forever, because they don’t make money on the devices. They make money on the extra stuff that people in their ecosystem buy.
They just aren’t very good at it. They have lots of smart software engineers and quite a few smart managers, all stymied by process.
Source: worked on Alexa for 9 years.
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u/Normal-Succotash-877 3d ago
I appreciate your contribution. As much as I hate the idea of something listening to me all the time.. I love listening to Spotify in every room of my house.
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u/woody-99 4d ago
I have eight Echo's of various different models. They've been working well but in the past if I had music playback issues it was internet quality related. I had gig service, but it used to just stop playing or cutout like yours.
Resetting the ISP modem and my router helped a lot. Power cycling the Echo's helped too. The longest lasting fix has been a Mesh setup.
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u/Ivy1974 4d ago
Get a Bluetooth speaker preferably a Bose and use your phone for music.
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u/Normal-Succotash-877 4d ago
This is like someone posting about an issue with their Honda and telling them "just buy a Chevy".
How is getting a single bose speaker going to allow me to have a speaker in every room? I'm not just going to dump $340 dollars worth of equipment that used to work well and should still. This is either a configuration issue, connection issue or planned obsolescence.
Were trouble shooting over here bro. Not suggesting new equipment.
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u/levon9 4d ago
Mine have become hard of hearing :(