If you're familiar with home assistants, you've likely heard of Alexa. Alexa is Amazon's assistant, and similar to Siri and Google Assistant, this helpful voice can answer questions for you and help you navigate interfaces on your TV and devices. Each company continues to make improvements, and with the advent of AI, it feels like the timing is perfect for big leaps to be made.
The price for Alexa+ is far too high
I can't see anybody paying for this outright
Although early access is free of charge, once Alexa+ is fully cooked and released to the public, that price will skyrocket to $20 a month. There's just no way I'll pay for that, considering that the only Alexa product in my house is my TV, and I can't see how I could ever recoup that value.
I don't think Alexa+ does nearly enough to justify a price tag that high. I know other companies offer paid plans, such as the Google One AI Premium plan, which charges the same for access to Gemini Advanced, but I don't see the value there either. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a more personalized experience while using Alexa, but I can't imagine somebody getting their money's worth unless they use it several hours a day.
Regular Alexa is still available at no extra cost.
What is working in Amazon's favor, however, is the fact that Alexa+ is baked into an Amazon Prime subscription. Interestingly enough, this means it's cheaper to pay for Prime than it is to get an Alexa+ subscription by itself. When you look at it that way, the value is much better because you get the improved Alexa and a streaming service on top of it. Of course, the free two-day shipping from Amazon is nice too.
Too many subscriptions to keep up with
I'm being priced out of a lot
Maybe five years ago, I would've looked at the price of Alexa+ and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to today, and there are so many subscriptions to keep up with, and as the price of just about everything continues to rise, I don't see a reason to make an exception for this. Yes, if you can get it bundled with your Amazon Prime subscription, then by all means go for it. I don't typically keep a year-round Prime membership, but getting Alexa+ baked into the subscription makes it a lot more appealing to do so.
YouTube TV, Netflix, and even Amazon Prime have all gone up in price in recent years, so there are some things that can't make the cut. Gone are the days of me paying for every service all at once, especially since cutting the cord was supposed to let me avoid doing that. Paying for everything doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I'd rather sign up for a service on a month-to-month basis just to watch what I want to watch and move on. When the time comes for me to sign up for Amazon Prime again, I'll enjoy Alexa+. In the meantime, I'm perfectly fine with the regular version of Alexa.