Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought the 3-pack deal and this review applies to all three. Most reviews complain about the sound quality but I didn't notice that so much. - Lack of response What bothered me the most was the unresponsiveness. The wake word works great, even at a whisper it will start listening, but it very frequently doesn't hear the command and just keeps listening and listening... and listening. My 1st gen would stop listening pretty quick if it doesn't hear anything or respond with "I don't understand" or something, the 2nd gen seems to listen forever and doesn't respond to even yelling at it. The times that it does respond, answers are often cut off: "Alexa, what's the speed of light?" - "Light's top speed is 299 mil" with a little static noise as it cuts out. - Lowest spoken volume is too loud The second annoyance is that the "level 1" volume is much louder than the 1st gen "level 1". With the 1st gen I usually kept it around 3 or 4 when listening to music and 2 when I'm working and want some background music, but with the 2nd gen, I usually have it on 1 or 2 and have to get up and press the volume down button to get a quieter volume. Also, when I have it on 1 and my sister "drops in" on me, the music resumes at level 3 afterward instead of going back to 1. - Glitchy There are also other occasional glitches, like one time my sister dropped in and the volume did "not" go up for the conversation, also sometimes the music volume doesn't go down when the Echo is listening. - Alarm doesn't work I set two daily morning alarms and they both have failed to ring! I checked the settings multiple times. I'm very happy with the 1st gen, it misunderstands me less than 10% of the time but it does or says something. Not being heard over 50% of the time with the 2nd gen is too much to take. I tested all three and reset one of them twice with no change.