Review on Alexa Enabled Navigation Announcements Streaming Compatible by Affan Yeo

I'll start off by saying we have 6 Echos in our house, so we're pretty familiar with how Alexa *should* work. I've been looking forward to this device since I heard about it and waited for a few reviews before ordering. Based on my experience compared to some of the first reviews I saw, I'm guessing a lot of free or discounted devices were sent out to people for review, but who knows, maybe I just got a bad module (more on that I'm looking forward to I really look forward to having Alexa on the go to quickly add tasks to my lists, running some of our home machines before we get home, and listening to some music from time to time, although all of these actions are possible with Viva, they are so annoying to perform that I ended up turning the device off Pros: 1. Easy setup 2. Much smaller than I expected which is nice Cons: 1. Device works on Alexa's wake word about 10-15% of the time Most of the time he just ignores you. In the mobile environment I would have expected it to be a little worse than at home, but useless. Whether the Viva you even with the car parked and silent with the sound switched on is a question of the individual case. The device has a 'wake up' button but it's a hassle to look for it while driving, not what I thought I'd buy. 2. App integration seems to be disabled - I figured the app could just be left running in the background on my phone and work for a while, but sometimes the app needs to be active (for the same command) to work. I couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason behind it, but every time I get in the car opening the app and leaving it running the whole time is a pain. If I could actually wake the device whenever I wanted to, maybe the app part would be tolerable, but instead it's just another annoyance compounded by Viva. (FWIW, I'm using an iPhone X) 3. Support? - This is one of those companies that emails you after you buy their product from Revain. I don't usually mind as the letters offer advice and direction or assistance. Finally, I replied to one of several emails ("If you need help, reply to this email"), describing my problems and asking if I might have a bad module or if they had any suggestions. That was last week and I haven't heard from them.4. The Bluetooth integration is a bit fiddly, but I'm putting it here because I couldn't find an answer to it anywhere before I ordered it. Of course, when you listen to music with the Viva, you need to set your car's Bluetooth audio mode. But sometimes I might just want to hear Alexa's response and leave my audio on the radio or satellite. Although most navigation apps can handle this (broadcasting audio over the always-on Bluetooth phone channel), the Viva app doesn't. The car must be in Bluetooth audio mode for you to hear any responses at all. So if you are listening to audio from another provider, you have to switch your car to BT audio mode just to hear the weather or even "OK". "that Alexa heard your command. 5. Viva **loves** audiobooks and podcasts! After giving up on this thing and trying to forget it, I went on a journey for a few hours where I found the audiobook finished , and then listened to podcasts. Viva ended up waking up constantly (every 3-6 minutes) from talking, even though nothing in the audio sounded like "Alexa.", so I left the Viva on to see how bad the things really were. The record was 14 minutes, but generally it would inaccurately respond to a non-wake word every 3-6 minutes. I finally turned it off. Although we're used to our home Alexa waking up falsely every now and then, it's usually pretty funny as it only happens once a week or so, but every 3-6 minutes isn't funny at all. I hope this one does Device will get better over time (with firmware update) - but for now it's in the glove box.