Author: Danielle

How to make video calls and group calls on an Amazon Echo

Amazon is constantly improving Alexa and adding new features to both its range of Echo smart speakers as well the Echo Show smart displays.

And in 2020 one feature which has been used a lot more than ever before is video calling. You could already use an Echo Show to call another one, but Amazon has recently expanded this to include the 2nd gen Fire TV Cube, to which you can now attach a web cam. Here’s how.

One missing feature which has quickly been added to quite a few video calling services this year is group calling. That’s also now possible on the Echo and Echo Show for both voice and video calls. You need to create a group in the Alexa app, then say “Alexa, call [name of group” to start the call.

You don’t even need an Echo. Calling works in the Alexa app on iPhone and Android, and fourth-gen or newer Fire tablets with Alexa are also 

Amazon announced that group calling would be coming when it launched new Echo devices in September and also said that it will add in-call effects for video calls so you can appear around bubbles or a garden landscape, or choose artistic styles like street art or a classic painting.

There’s a lot you can with Alexa in terms of communication. Here are some of them:

  • Voice calls to Echos, compatible Fire tablets and the Alexa app
  • Video calls to Echo Show and Fire TV Cube, Fire tablets and Alexa app
  • Voice messages (voice recordings sent by Alexa) to another Alexa contact
  • Text messages sent in the Alexa app to other Alexa users

How do I get Alexa to call someone?

There are four main ways to communicate:

  1. Calling
  2. Messaging
  3. Drop In
  4. Announcing

Before you can do any of these, you need to allow access to your contacts in the Alexa app. You probably did this when you first installed it, but if not open the App, sign into your Amazon account if necessary and tap on Communicate at the bottom.

How to make calls and group calls on Amazon Echo

You’ll either see your contact list, or a prompt to grant permission to access them.

Voice calls

To make a voice call, just say “Alexa, call Lewis Painter”. Obviously, don’t say that if your friend isn’t called Lewis Painter. Use the names in your contacts list. You can set nicknames, such as Mum or Dad, if you don’t want to say their full name.

The recipient’s Echo will tell them that “Jim is calling” (well, your name, not mine) and its light ring will pulse green. They can choose to accept or reject the call by saying “Answer” or “Ignore”.

An alternative, for close friends and family, is Drop In. This works the same way, but doesn’t wait for the recipient of the call to accept or decline the call, it just starts the call. On an Echo Show, it will begin with an opaque view which gradually becomes clearer.

Since all Echos are hands-free devices with speakers and microphones, calling works like any speakerphone, but this does mean anyone nearby can hear your conversation.

As mentioned, you can also make calls within the Alexa app. This means you can easily call (or message) people on a Fire tablet, Android phone or iPhone / iPad.

Another way to communicate is to use announcements. You can say “Alexa, announce that dinner is ready” to broadcast that message to all Echo devices (and compatible Fire tablets, and devices with the Alexa app) in your home.

TIP: You can enable or disable Calling & Messaging as well as just Announcements and Drop In per device by tapping on Devices in the Alexa app, then the device from the list, then Communication.

Messages

If you want to send a message say, “Alexa, send Lewis a message”. She will ask what message to send, and you then dictate it to her.

The recording of your voice will be played back to them when they’re ready, and it will also be turned into text so they can read it in the app. A yellow ring will pulse on their Echo indicating a new message is waiting and the recipient can say “Alexa, play my messages” and she will read out the message.

How to make calls and group calls on Amazon Echo

In the app, the recipient can tap on the text to hear the original recording – just like listening to a voicemail. And since the speech-to-text is sometimes wrong, it can be the only way to figure out what the person actually said. It’s surprisingly accurate, though.

There’s more: you can use the app to type messages to your contacts, just like WhatsApp.

When you tap on a conversation, you’ll can choose to make a voice call or video call to that person using the icons at the top.

Video calls / Group video calls

Making a video call is exactly the same as a voice call, with the obvious difference that you’ll see the other person and they’ll see you when you say “Alexa, call mum”.

If you want to make a group video call, open the Alexa app and:

  1. Tap Communicate at the bottom
  2. Tap the person icon (top right)
  3. Tap the + symbol next to Add New
  4. Choose Add Group
  5. Tap Enable when prompted about enhanced features
  6. Select all the contacts which will be in the group
  7. Name the group
  8. Tap Create Group

Once that’s done you can say “Alexa call [name of group]”.

How to make calls and group calls on Amazon Echo

Remember that you can use video calling in the Alexa app as well as on an Echo Show, Echo Spot, supported Fire tablet and a 2nd-gen Fire TV Cube with a suitable webcam plugged in.

Alexa, Do not disturb

You’re unlikely to want people to call you at any hour, so there’s a Do Not Disturb feature. You can say “Alexa, do not disturb” and “Alexa, turn off do not disturb”, but in the Alexa app you can set up times between which it will block calls and messages.

To do this, tap Devices from the bottom menu. Tap on the device you want to control and tap Do Not Disturb which is in the General section.

Tap Scheduled and enter a start time and an end time – unfortunately you can only set one daily time period at the moment.

And just to clarify, you will have to make these settings on each Echo device you own.

Related articles for further reading


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Amazfit GTR 2 review

Amazfit is a branch of Chinese wearables brand Huami. Whether or not you’ve heard of these brands isn’t important. What matters is that Amazfit is turning out some great-value smartwatches and fitness trackers for those who can’t justify spending more on a Fitbit or Apple Watch.

The Amazfit GTR 2 is a traditional-looking smartwatch which runs the company’s own custom software. This means you can’t install apps on it: you get what you get.

It can track various exercises such as swimming and cycling, as well as monitoring your sleep, heart rate and more.

The watch was released alongside the Amazfit GTS 2 and both are successors to the Amazfit GTR and GTS respectively.

Design & Build

The Amazfit GTR 2 has a classic watch design, with a large, virtually bezel-free, circular touchscreen. The outside edges of the watch have less of a chunky feel than the GTR did with its thick bezel, all of which makes the GTR 2 a more understated, more refined wearable.

Amazfit sent the Sport Edition for testing, which comes with a black silicone strap and an aluminium alloy case. You can also get the Classic Edition, which swaps the silicone strap for black leather and changes the casing to stainless steel. It’s more expensive, as you might guess.

Personally, I would prefer the latter’s design as a day-to-day watch, as the silicone strap just doesn’t complement most outfits and doesn’t offer a premium feel. In addition, the silicone isn’t breathable, making my arm rather sweaty after strenuous workouts, so you have to remember to take it off and dry it after intensive sessions.

Amazfit GTR 2 front on table angled

Behind tempered glass is a 1.39in AMOLED display. The glass has an anti-fingerprint coating which did a good job. The screen is reasonably bright, but is very reflective when used under direct sunlight.

To navigate the user interface, you use a mix of the buttons on the outer edge, as well as the touchscreen. This is a painless experience for the most part – although it did become a little tricky after swimming due to having wet fingers. 

The GTR 2 includes an optical heart rate sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, air pressure sensor, ambient light sensor, waterproofing up to 5ATM, a built-in microphone for answering calls, GPS, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

It also has a built-in speaker for listening to music and hearing the other person on a phone call. I also managed to connect my Bluetooth headphones with the device without any issues. 

The sound produced is quite punchy for such a small device, though if you move the watch certain ways, the audio isn’t as clear.

Software & Features

Like other Amazfit devices, the watch runs on Huami’s own custom OS, which means there’s no support for third-party apps unlike smartwatches which run Google’s Wear OS (formerly Android Wear).

All the basics are covered, including alarms, calendar, notifications, weather forecasts and extras, such as phone calls and music playback.

Of course, fitness tracking capabilities are core to any smartwatch.

Amazfit GTR 2 Activities screen

Out of the box, you get twelve dedicated sports modes – these are outdoor running, treadmill, trail running, walking, outdoor cycling, indoor cycling, pool swimming, open water swimming, elliptical, free training, climbing and skiing.

In addition, you also get a choice of over 90 additional workouts, including yoga, dance, boxing and even darts. These can be added to your main workout screen for quick access, if you want to monitor a sport you take on regularly.

The Amazfit GTR 2 tracks the duration, distance, calories burned, heart rate, speed and location of each workout. If you opt for one of the 12 dedicated modes, you’ll also get more granular details, such as gradients in cycling or your average stroke rate during swimming.

App & Performance

Confusingly, Amazfit has used a few different apps with its smartwatches. Zepp is the latest, as the company is rebranding some of its wearables to a different name.

The main design and layout is similar to the previous app, with sections for your workouts, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring and device settings.

The logs, however, have become more detailed. For example, in sleep monitoring there’s now a section where you can add what activity you did right before you went to sleep (such as watching your phone, or drinking alcohol), and how it left you feeling in the morning.

You can then compare this to your sleep data in previous logs and see if there’s a correlation between the two – though it’s a shame this isn’t done by the app.

Cyberpunk 2077

Similarly the exercise logs are easier to digest, and the GPS seems a lot more accurate than the older GTR.

However, there are still issues with translation when it comes to the app, with grammar issues littered throughout the copy and no links to accredited medical pages that rivals such as Withings offer. The app is gradually improving, but still has some way to go.

The GTR 2 will auto-detect workouts so you don’t have to start the tracking manually. That’s the theory, at least, but in practice, it’s not intuitive at all and only seems to trigger quite far into an exercise. I’d recommend turning this feature off and sticking to manually monitoring your activities. 

Heart rate monitoring seems to be mostly accurate and the app provides a breakdown on what ‘zone’ your BPM was in during workouts. In addition, you can manually measure your SpO2, as well as your stress levels. The former can be a little tricky to get working, but the readings I did take seemed largely normal, at around 93% on average.

It’s worth noting however that rivals such as the Huawei Watch GT 2 continuously monitor stress, which is much more useful than having to take readings manually when your emotions are high. In addition, none of these tests on the watch are accredited by a medical body as they are on devices such as the Apple Watch. 

Battery

Amazfit has always succeeded in making its devices last a long time between charges, and the 471mAh cell on the GTR 2 is no exception. The company states this gives around 14 days of typical usage, and I can say after testing that the watch lives up to this claim.

It’s excellent – and besides other Amazfit products, you won’t find another smartwatch that lasts as long as this one.

Amazfit GTR 2 heart rate screen

If you manage to keep the watch mostly in standby mode, it’ll last an average of a whopping 38 days. If you use heart rate monitoring continuously and workout a lot, it will drain faster.

Charging takes around two and a half hours – slower than some rivals – but the long battery life more than makes up for this.

Price & Availability

The Amazfit GTR 2 is available to purchase now and costs £159/US$179 for the Sport Edition or $199 for the Classic Edition. Amazfit doesn’t have any official UK pricing for the Classic Edition, but the EU/US costs equivalate to around £170.

You can currently purchase both versions directly from and Amazon UK, if you’re in the UK, and and Amazon US, if you’re in America.

In the fitness tracker space, this is still a competitive price in comparison to rivals such as the Zepp E and more than half the price of flagship smartwatches such as the Apple Watch. However, it is a bit of a step up in price from the previous-generation GTR, which retails for around £122.99/$149.99.

This is most likely due to the inclusion of features such as a microphone and speaker. Arguably, you have to consider how much you’ll use these features. If you like to take calls on your watch, then it’s worth the extra money for the GTR 2. If not, it may be worth looking at the slightly cheaper GTR. 

For a more Apple watch-esque design and a cheaper price, there’s the Huawei Watch Fit, which also features virtual built-in workouts. The battery life isn’t quite as impressive as the GTR 2’s but 12 days on average isn’t anything to sniff at all the same.

Amazfit GTR 2 workout screen

For more alternatives, see our picks of the best fitness trackers, as well as the best smartwatches to see how other rivals compare to the Amazfit GTR 2.

Verdict

In most areas, the Amazfit GTR 2 is an improvement on the previous generation. Exercise tracking seems to have improved after moving to a new app, while the design changes, such as the ‘borderless’ screen, create a much better-looking device overall.

It’s not faultless – there’s no third-party app support, and the Zepp app still doesn’t quite match up to rivals. In addition, the SpO2 readings didn’t always work properly and the results aren’t accredited by any official medical body. 

Nonetheless, you’d be hard-pushed to find a device with as good as a battery life as this one for this price.

Specs

Amazfit GTR 2: Specs

  • 46.4×46.4×10.7mm
  • 31.5g (Sport Edition), 39g (Classic Edition)
  • 5 ATM water-resistant
  • 1.39in AMOLED screen, Resolution 454×454, 326 ppi
  • Tempered glass with anti-fingerprint and ODLC coating
  • 22m Silicone strap (Sport Edition), 22m leather strap (Classic Edition)
  • BioTracker 2 PPG biological tracking optical sensor
  • 6-axis acceleration sensor
  • 3-axis geomagnetic sensor
  • Air-pressure sensor
  • Acceleration sensor
  • Ambient light sensor
  • Gyroscope sensor
  • WLAN 2.4GH
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • 471mAh battery
  • Speaker and microphone
  • Magnetic charging stand
  • Approx 2.5 hours charging time
  • Typical usage – 14 days
  • Basic watch mode – 38 days
  • Supports Android 5.0 and above, iOS 10.0 and above

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Jabra Elite 85t review

The Jabra Elite 85t are a moderate reinvention for Jabra – these are the company’s first true wireless headphones designed for noise cancellation, which has in turn prompted a redesign to the buds themselves to better suit the new tech.

I wish I could say that this marks a triumphant step forward for the company, but in fact it feels like the opposite – the 85t headphones offer markedly worse audio performance than their 75t predecessors, and are significantly less comfortable to boot. They’re still solidly specced headphones with plenty of nice-to-have features, but in a competitive market that alone isn’t enough.

So what went wrong?

Design and build

Let’s start with the design. Jabra has redesigned the earbuds’ fit so that they don’t go as deep into the ear canal, instead sitting only in the outer ear. It’s an odd move, and one the company clearly knew might prove controversial, going so far as to warn reviewers to approach the new fit with an open mind.

Jabra Elite 85t

The design change is intended to create a better seal and block out more external noise. This would be great if it worked, but in my experience it achieves the opposite. I can’t get a good seal in my ears with any of the three included sizes of ear tip, meaning no matter how far I crank up the active noise cancellation (ANC) I can still hear everything going on around me.

This may just be bad luck – other reviews I’ve read haven’t shared my complaint, and I actually got a great fit from the Jabra Active 75t. It might be that I’m just unlucky enough to have ears that don’t fit Jabra’s design. I’ve never had this bad a seal from any true wireless headphones I’ve tested with silicone tips however, which makes me worry that I won’t be the only one to suffer this problem.

It doesn’t help that since the tips are a custom design, you can’t replace them with any third-party off-the-shelf tips in the hope of finding a better fit. The shallower design also feels distinctly looser – I got used to this over my three weeks of testing, and they never actually fell out, but they often feel like they might. And I’d still be pretty wary about taking them for a run.

Only available in black, the Elite 85ts are otherwise fairly unobtrusive. They’re compact and lightweight, with nothing dangling from your ear as you’d get with AirPods. A physical button on each bud handles controls – more reliable, if less comfortable, than a touch-sensitive surface as you often find – and boast IPX4 waterproofing, so they should be able to handle a bit of rain or sweat.

Jabra Elite 85t case

The accompanying charging case is admittedly a little bulky and the hinge feels decidedly flimsy, but those are small complaints really, especially given it’s now had an upgrade to include built-in Qi wireless charging.

Audio quality and noise cancelling

Of course, it’s possible to live with a flawed design if the sound quality makes up for it. Unfortunately, as I’ve already outlined, Jabra’s design choices here actively reduce sound quality this time around.

Let’s start with the good though. In a quiet space where ANC isn’t a factor, the 85ts sound great. Jabra’s headphones always have a fairly well-balanced sound, and these are no exception – with a tunable EQ in the accompanying app if you want to shift the audio in one direction or another.

The first time you set the buds up you’ll also be prompted to take a hearing test, which the app uses to fine-tune the audio even more to better suit your personal audible frequency range. The before/after difference here isn’t game-changing, but it clearly helps.

Jabra Elite 85t

If your main aim is to buy headphones to use inside, while on Zoom calls or the like, then these should do you well, especially since the mics pick up audio well, so you should sound pretty crisp on conference calls. But I’m betting you’re not planning on dropping £220/$230 on headphones for Zoom.

And if you plan to leave the use, you run into trouble, because the ANC here is pretty terrible. Or rather, the best ANC in the world can’t make up for the bad fit.

Jabra retro-actively added ANC to the 75t models, which I’ve tested. Surprisingly, for headphones not designed for ANC in the first place, it works wonders, blocking out almost everything. That means the ANC itself isn’t the problem here – there’s just a limit to how much it can compensate for a design with serious noise leak.

It’s a similar problem we’ve seen on the likes of the Huawei FreeBuds 3 or Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, which both lack silicone tips entirely. The ANC essentially just becomes a way of countering the noise leak, bringing you back to square one – meaning you’ve paid over the odds for ANC when you could have gotten the same noise reduction from a budget pair of silicone-tipped earbuds with a good fit.

Jabra Elite 85t in case

Turning the 85t ANC on does reduce noise, but it’s just not by enough. It’s at the level where I’d frequently think the ANC must be off because I was hearing so much noise from nearby traffic, only to tap the button and find out it had been on the whole time, just without delivering on its promise.

Perversely, the accompanying hear-through mode – designed to make it easier to hear conversations or announcements without taking the buds out – isn’t good enough either. Sure, there’s plenty of noise coming in anyway, but the hear-through mode does little to clarify it, leaving everything muffled, so I would spend my time hearing too much of the world when I didn’t want to, and not enough of it when I did.

On the upside, at least the old joke about bad food in small portions doesn’t apply. The audio quality may not be great, but it does last. Even with ANC on you should get five or so hours of battery between charges, with 25 hours total once the case is factored in.

Jabra Elite 85t Qi wireless

Charging is handled by USB-C, but as mentioned above the case now also supports Qi wireless charging, meaning you can top the headphones up from almost any wireless charger, or even from a phone with reverse wireless charging. It’s a convenience more than a necessity, but welcome at this price especially.

Price and availability

Speaking of. I could forgive the 85t’s flaws more if it cost less, but at £220/$230 these are almost impossible to recommend.

Our top true wireless headphones right now – the Cambridge Melomania 1 – are just £80 on Amazon at the time of writing, though admittedly they don’t support wireless charging or ANC, and they’re not available in the US.

If those are a must, the Galaxy Buds+ are now a mere £100/$100 on Amazon, and the Galaxy Buds Live a little more at £150/$140. Hell, these days you can often even find AirPods Pro for less than the Jabra 85ts.

And if you know you love the brand, last year’s Elite 75t offer better sound, ANC, and a more comfortable design at £170/$180, and also often reduced.

For more options, check out our full ranking of the best true wireless earbuds we’ve tested.

Verdict

The Jabra Elite 85t earbuds are a frustrating mis-step from a company that doesn’t usually make them. Yes, on paper these have had a spec boost and added ANC, but none of that counts for much when the physical design lets the audio quality down so badly.

Maybe I’m just unlucky – certainly other reviewers seem to have a better time with them. But if nothing else, please take that as a word of caution to try before you buy, if at all possible.

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The 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31, our favorite SSD, plummets to $84

If you’re looking to treat yourself to something special for the holidays, one of the best SSDs you can buy is available at a phenomenal price. SK Hynix via Amazon is selling its 1TB Gold S31 SSD for $84. That’s 20 percent off the current cost, and matches the all-time low. To get the deal you must click the coupon underneath the price on the product page.

The Gold S31 is our top pick as the best SSD for most people in 2020. We gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars in our review. The Gold S31 is “the fastest SATA drive we’ve ever tested for sustained read and write operations,” we said at the time.

SK Hynix says you can expect sequential read speeds up to 560 megabytes per second, and write speeds up to 525 megabytes per second from this 2.5-inch SATA III drive. Those speeds were about right when we ran the CrystalDiskMark 6 benchmark in our tests.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of SK Hynix, but you’ve almost certainly used their components, as SK Hynix is a major supplier of flash memory and DRAM to the big brands. When it uses its own name on products like this drive they tend to be well priced, but snagging the Gold S31 at just $84 is simply excellent. The drive also comes with a five-year warranty.

[Today’s deal: SK Hynix Gold S31 for $84 at Amazon.]

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HyperX’s superb Cloud Flight headset is $99 and arrives by Christmas

If you need an excellent wireless gaming headset the Internet is your friend today. Amazon is selling the HyperX Cloud Flight for $100. That’s $30 off the usual cost and within sniffing distance of the best price we’ve seen all year.

We reviewed the Cloud Flight in May 2018, giving it four out of five stars. “Excellent battery life, a durable design, and great noise isolation bolster a solid-sounding headset into a top-tier pick,” we said in our review. The biggest drawback we had at the time was its $160 price point, which definitely isn’t an issue today.

The HyperX Cloud Flight features a detachable noise canceling microphone whose volume can only be adjusted in wireless mode—it can’t be tweaked if you’re using a 3.5mm audio connection. The headset slider is made of steel, with ear cups that rotate up to 90 degrees. There are on-device volume and mic muting controls, and it has glowing red LEDs. Battery life is up to 30 hours, 

As for the audio, we thought it didn’t quite live up to HyperX’s Cloud Alpha headset. Nevertheless, we found it had very balanced sound, but we found the absence of adjustable microphone settings a bit lacking.

For $100, this is an excellent headset to accompany you on your gaming journey. If Amazon sells out the Cloud Flight is on sale at $100 all over the place, including the Microsoft Store and Best Buy.

[Today’s deal: HyperX Cloud Flight for $100 on Amazon.]

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