Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'll start by saying we have 6 echos in our house, so we're pretty familiar with how an Alexa *should* work. I'd been looking forward to this device since I heard about it, and waited until a few reviews came in before ordering. Based on my experience vs. some of the initial reviews I saw, I'm guessing there were a lot of free or discounted for review units sent out to folks, but who knows maybe I just got a bad unit (more on this later). I was really looking forward to having Alexa on the road, for adding quick todos to my lists, controlling some of our home automation before we got home, and a little music from time to time. While all of these activities are possible with Viva, they are so annoying to perform, I finally unplugged the device. Pros: 1. Easy setup 2. Much smaller than I expected it to be, which is nice Cons: 1. The device works about 10-15% of the time with the "Alexa" wake word. Most of the time it just ignores you. While I expected it to be a little worse in a mobile environment than at home, it's unusable. Even with a parked car, and the audio turned way down, it's hit or miss as to whether Viva will hear you. The device does have a "wake" button, but feeling around for that while I'm driving is a pain, and not what I thought I was buying. 2. The App integration seems off- I assumed the app could just be left running in the background on my phone, and this works some of the time, but other times the app needs to be active (for the same command) to work. I wasn't able to figure out the rhyme or reason to this, but having to pull the app up and leaving it running the whole time every time I get in the car is a pain. If I could actually wake the device when I wanted, maybe the app part would be tolerable, but instead it is just another annoyance compounding with Viva. (FWIW, I'm using an iPhone X) 3. Support? - This is one of those companies that starts sending you emails after you purchase their item from Amazon. Usually, I don't mind this since the mails offer tips and instructions, or offer help. I finally responded to one of several mails ("if you need help respond to this mail"), and described my issues, and asked if I maybe had a bad unit, or if they had any suggestions. This was last week, and I haven't heard from them at all. 4. Bluetooth integration - this one is a bit of a nit, but I'm putting it here because I couldn't find the answer to this anywhere before I ordered mine. Obviously if you are listening to music from Viva, you need your car set to bluetooth audio mode in your car. But other times I might just want to hear the response from Alexa and leave my audio set to radio or satellite. Even though most navigation apps can handle this (sending the audio through the always active bluetooth phone channel), Viva app does not. The car must be in bluetooth audio mode for you to hear any responses at all - so if you are listening to audio from any other provider, you must switch your car over to BT audio mode, just to hear the weather or even the "OK" that Alexa has heard your command. 5. Viva **Loves** audiobooks and podcasts! After giving up on this thing, and kind of trying to forget about it, I took a several hour roadtrip where I finished an audio book, and then listened to podcasts. The Viva finally woke up constantly (every 3-6 minutes) from the speaking, even though nothing in the audio sounded like "Alexa". I was bored and driving, and kind of amused by the constant "Sorry, I don't understand" so I left Viva plugged in to se how bad it really was. The record was 14 minutes, but in general it was every 3-6 mins for it to inaccurately respond to a non-wake word. I finally unplugged it. While we're used to our home Alexas waking up from time to time incorrectly, it's usually kind of funny since it only happens once a week or so, but every 3-6 mins is not funny at all. I'm hoping this unit may get better over time (with a firmware update) - but for now, it's in the glovebox.