Alexa+ Review: Can Amazon’s AI Assistant Keep Up in 2025?
After rebuilding a home lost in a fire, the author took the opportunity to reconsider the role of smart assistants in daily life. Rather than sticking with older devices, she set out to explore Amazon’s newly upgraded digital assistant Alexa+. Rolled out in early 2025, Alexa+ is powered by generative AI and claims to go far beyond the Alexa of the past.
While Alexa once impressed with simple voice commands, it now faces stiff competition. With tools like ChatGPT capable of complex reasoning, creative tasks, and real-time actions, digital assistants have a higher bar to meet. In response, Amazon launched Alexa+ as a model-agnostic assistant that uses tools from Anthropic, Amazon Nova, and others to serve user needs more intelligently.
However, performance in demos often differs from real-world results. That’s why this test series was designed to determine whether Alexa+ lives up to the promise of becoming a truly helpful assistant in daily life.
Setup and First Impressions: A Mixed Start
Testing began on a new Echo Spot device. The setup process was smoother than in the past, thanks to the QR-code system and streamlined Wi-Fi connectivity. Once the Alexa+ upgrade was accepted, the onboarding experience included a quick video explaining how Alexa would adapt over time. The assistant also requested access to Google accounts for email and calendar integration.
Even so, some frustrations emerged early. The app still struggles with usability. For example, finding how to set a default music service was needlessly confusing, buried behind non-intuitive navigation. Odd error messages, such as those related to Audible integration, didn’t help either.
During the permissions process for third-party services like OpenTable, Uber, and Ticketmaster, the transparency was appreciated. However, granting access to each service manually felt tedious, and the cluttered interface only made things harder.
Despite the design quirks, Alexa+ demonstrated potential. It showed early signs of adapting through linked accounts, personalized settings, and the ability to summarize emails. Still, these capabilities did not always work smoothly.
Real-World Use: Promise Meets Friction
Testing core features revealed Alexa+ to be functional but flawed. For example, it could access a user’s calendar and summarize the day’s events. It even supported follow-up questions without repeating “Alexa,” which helped create a more natural flow. However, the assistant often interrupted or misunderstood input during task creation.
When asked to remember a SkyMiles number, Alexa+ repeatedly misinterpreted the request. At times, it claimed to save the information, but then failed to recall it. In another test, the assistant read the saved number aloud using long numeric phrases instead of simple digits, making the output hard to interpret.
Further evaluation focused on summarizing emails. In one case, Alexa+ successfully processed a school newsletter and identified the key dates. Yet, when asked to add those dates to the calendar, it selected only three out of a list of twelve. Relying on the assistant alone could have meant missing several important events.
Another feature promised by Alexa+ was price tracking on Amazon. The assistant could set deal alerts but had trouble reporting current prices. It also struggled to confirm product availability by color—returning incomplete information or omitting key details already listed online.
These early observations suggest that Alexa+ may not yet be ready to fully replace manual actions. While it handles certain tasks well, consistency remains an issue. In some cases, Alexa+ didn’t respond at all or failed to complete the request accurately.
In its current form, Alexa+ feels like a work in progress. It shows ambition and emerging utility but stumbles on execution. Although many of these tasks should be routine, performance still varies. In future tests, the focus will shift to more advanced agentic features, where Alexa+ is expected to demonstrate deeper integration with smart home systems and real-time task automation. Whether it rises to meet those expectations remains to be seen.
