Amazon Tap Best Buy

Amazon Tap - Alexa-Enabled Portable Bluetooth Speaker

AMAZON TAP

It has a great feature for music lovers. Just tap the microphone button and ask for music from Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.
Uses the Alexa Voice Service when connected to Wi-Fi or a mobile hotspot to play music, read the news, provide weather reports, and even order a pizza.

Streamsall your music via Bluetooth from your phone or tablet
Delivers crisp sound powered by Dolby, with dual stereo speakers that provide 360º omni-directional audio
Provides up to 9 hours of playback

Always getting smarter and adding new features and skills
Includes Charging Cradle
Unlike Amazon Echo, which uses far-field voice recognition for hands-free Alexa voice interactions, Amazon Tap activates Alexa only after you tap the microphone button—providing up to 9 hours of continuous playback.




SETUP: it is very easy to setup. Just follow the following steps.

AMAZON TAP SETUP

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Size	Amazon Tap: 6.2" x 2.6" x 2.6" (159 mm x 66 mm x 66 mm); Charging Cradle: 0.6" x 2.6" x 2.6" (15 mm x 66 mm x 66 mm)
Weight	Amazon Tap: 16.6 oz. (470 grams); Charging Cradle: 3.8 oz. (109 grams) Actual size and weight may vary by manufacturing process
Battery Life	Up to 9 hours of continuous playback. Battery life will vary based on device settings, usage, and environmental factors. Actual results may vary.
Wi-Fi Connectivity	Supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or mobile hotspots that use the 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA, and WPA2 security using password authentication. Supports 2.4 GHz wireless band only. Learn more.
Bluetooth Connectivity	Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) support for audio streaming from your mobile device to Amazon Tap.  Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) for voice control of connected mobile devices. Media control over AVRCP is not supported for Mac OS X devices.
Audio	Dual 1.5-inch drivers and dual passive radiators for bass extension
System Requirements	Amazon Tap comes ready to connect to your home Wi-Fi. The Alexa App is compatible with Fire OS, Android, and iOS devices and also accessible via your web browser. Certain skills and services may require subscription or other fees. When tethering to a mobile device hotspot, standard data rates may apply.
Warranty and Service	1-year limited warranty and service included. Optional 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year extended warranty available for U.S. customers sold separately. Use of Amazon Tap is subject to the terms found here.
Included in the Box	Amazon Tap, Charging Cradle, microUSB cable and adapter, and quick start guide

AMAZON TAP FUNCTION BUTTONS

After knowing why you must buy Amazon tap, it is good will do more review on Amazon tap by knowing it origin. HISTORY TheAmazon Tap, is a portable and smaller version of the Echo with dual stereospeakers. Amazon Echo (known in-development as Doppler or Project D andshortened and referred to as Echo) is a voice-enabled wireless speaker developed by Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25-inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. The device responds to the name "Alexa"; this "wake word" can be changed by theuser to either "Amazon" or "Echo". The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback,making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. It can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation hub. Amazon had been developing Echo inside its Lab126 offices inSilicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass. since at least 2010 in confirmed reports. The device was part of Amazon’s first attempts to expand its device portfolio beyond the Kindle e-reader. The Echo was prominently featured in Amazon's first-ever Super Bowl ad in 2016. Echo was initially limited to Amazon Prime members or byinvitation, but became widely available in the USA on June 23, 2015. Press speculates that it will make its Canadian debut in mid-to-late 2016, after Amazon posted job listings for developers for Alexa and co-hosted a hackathon in Toronto.Additionally, the Alexa voice service is available to be added to other devices and other companies' devices and services are encouraged to connect to it. Overview of Operation In the default mode the device continuously listens to all speech, monitoring for the wake word to be spoken. The device also comes with amanually and voice-activated remote control which can be used in lieu of the'wake word'. Echo's microphones can be manually disabled by pressing a mute button to turn off the audio processing circuit. Echo requires a Wi-Fi internet connection in order to work. Echo's voice recognition capability is based on Amazon Web Services and the Amazon common voice platform it acquired from Yap, Evi, and IVONA (a Polish-based specialist in voice technologies used in the Kindle Fire). Echo performs well with a 'good' (low latency) Internetconnection which minimizes processing time due to minimal communication round trips, streamable responses and geo-distributed service endpoints. Available services Echo offers weather from AccuWeather and news from a varietyof sources, including local radio stations, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn. Echo can play music from owner's Amazon Music accounts and has built-in support for the Pandora and Spotify streaming music services and has support for IFTTT and Nest Thermostats. Echo can also play music from streaming services such as Apple Music, and Google Play Music from a phone or tablet. Echo maintains voice-controlled alarms, timers, shopping and to-do lists and can access Wikipedia articles. Echo will respond to your questions about items in yourGoogle calendar. It also integrates with Yonomi, Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, SmartThings, Insteon, and Wink.Additionally, integration with the Echo is in the works for Countertop by Orange Chef, Scout Alarm, Garageio, Toymail, MARA, and Mojio. Echo also has access to skills built with the Alexa SkillsKit. These are 3rd-party developed voice experiences that add to the capabilities of any Alexa-enabled device (such as the Echo). Examples of skills include the ability to play music, answer general questions, set an alarm, order a pizza, get an Uber, and more. Skills are continuously being added to increase the capabilities available to the user. The Alexa Skills Kit is acollection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation and code samples that makeit fast and easy for any developer to add skills to Alexa. Developers can also use the "Smart Home Skill API", a new addition to the Alexa SkillsKit, to easily teach Alexa how to control cloud-controlled lighting and thermostat devices. All of the code runs in the cloud – nothing is on any user device. A developer can follow tutorials to learn how to quickly build voice experiences for their new and existing applications. Voice system Echo's natural lifelike voices result from speech-unitselection technology. High speech accuracy is achieved through sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) algorithms built into the Echo's text-to-speech (TTS) engine. Software updates The Echo functionality periodically evolves as Amazon releases new software for it. Most new releases will fix bugs in addition to including enhanced functionality. New releases are pushed to the devices on a gradual basis so it may take several days to a week or more for a particular device to be updated. Because much of Echo's intelligence lies in the cloud, significant functional enhancements can be made to Echo without updating the software version it is running. For example, in April 2015, the Echo added theability to give live sports scores without updating the software version,running on the device. Version      Date Description 3417          2016-07-18         Bug fixes and performance improvements. 3389          2016-06-29         Wi-Fi tethering - connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot on a mobile device. Bug fixes and performance improvements. 3202          2016-03-27         3077          2016-02-04         General improvements and performance enhancements. Listen to music from Spotify with a Spotify Premium subscription. Support for public Wi-Fi networks. New wake word: Echo was added. 3058                    General improvements and performance enhancements. Added Movie Times function. Added NFL Scores. 3034                    2723          2015-09-24         General improvements and performance enhancements. 2690                    2606          2015-07-10         2530          2015-06-01         Listen to audiobooks from Audible.com. 2392          2015-03-30         Control supported Belkin and Philips connected home devices as well as general improvements and performance enhancements 2332          2015-02-26         Bug fixes and performance improvements. 2249          2015-01-28         Additional voice commands for Shopping and To-do Lists—can review shopping-list and to-do list items. 2221          2015-01-12         2171          2015-01-07         2057          2014-11-06         Initial release Hardware Amazon Echo unpacked, January 2015 The Echo hardware complement includes a Texas InstrumentsDM3725 ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 256MB of LPDDR1 RAM and 4GB of storage space. Connectivity Echo provides dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. Input The Echo is intended to be voice controlled at the unit, however, a mic-enabled remote control similar to the one bundled with the FireTV is available for purchase. An action button on top of the unit is provided for user setup in a new location, and the mute button allows the microphones to be turned off. The top half-inch of the unit rotates to increase or decrease the speaker volume. The Echo must be plugged in to operate since it has no internal battery. Related gadgets In March 2016, Amazon unveiled the Amazon Echo Dot,which is a hockey puck sized version of the Echo designed to connect to existing speakers since it only has a small speaker. The Amazon Echo Dot allows you to use allthe same functions as the original Amazon Echo just in a smaller size. In May 2016, Amazon made Alexa available as a web app fortesting purposes, which it described as "simulat[ing] the look and feel of an Amazon Echo".The simulator was aimed at developers outside of the US, where Echo was not yet available at that time. Privacy concerns There are concerns about the access Echo has to privateconversations in the home, or other non-verbal indications that can identify who is present in the home and who is not—based on audible cues such as footstep-cadence or radio/television programming. Amazon responds to theseconcerns by stating that Echo only streams recordings from the user's home whenthe 'wake word' activates the device, though the device is technically capableof streaming voice recordings at all times, and in fact will always be listening to detect if a user has uttered the word. Echo uses past voice recordings the user has sent to thecloud service to improve response to future questions the user may pose. To address privacy concerns, the user can delete voice recordings that are currently associated with the user's account, but doing so may degrade the user's experience using voice search. To delete these recordings, the user can visit the Manage My Device page on Amazon.com or contact Amazon customer service. Echo uses an address set in the Alexa companion app when it needs a location. Amazon and third-party apps and websites use locationinformation to provide location-based services and store this information toprovide voice services, the Maps app, Find Your Device, and to monitor the performance and accuracy of location services. For example, Echo voice services use the user's location to respond to the user's requests for nearby restaurants or stores. Similarly, Echo uses the user's location to process the user's mapping-related requests and improve the Maps experience. All information collected is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice. Amazon retains digital recordings of users audio spoken afterthe "wake up word," and while the audio recordings are subject todemands by law enforcement, government agents, and other entities via subpoena, Amazon publishes some information about the warrants it receives, the subpoenas it receives, and some of the warrant-less demands it receives, allowing customers some indication as to the percentage of illegal demands for customer information it receives. Limitations Purchasing merchandise or digital media such as songs, bycommanding Echo to buy the song, does require manual intervention—through an alternate user interface—to complete the purchase. Echo has demonstrated hit-or-miss results when asked common questions that users would expect better answers to. Echo sometimes confuses certain homophones. The current location of the device is set to Seattle (Amazonheadquarters) by default and must be changed manually, but can only be set to alocation within the United States. This is different from smartphone-based voice assistants that can get the actual location via built-in GPS locators. This restriction can lead to undesired or seemingly "wrong" results for questions that imply the location such as "What is the weather" (around here) or "Set an alarm for 10:00am" (local time here). There are several attempts to circumvent the United States only restriction, particularly by users in Europe and Australia. One such workaround is to set the Echo to a timezone that is exactly 12 hours difference from the local time. For example, if the current time in London is 11:30am, the user can set Echo to Hawaii Standard Time, which would be 11:30pm. This would enable Echo to report the correct time. There are two undesirable effects with using this method. Oneis the incorrect AM/PM notation and the second is the incorrect date. Another more sophisticated workaround is by manipulating the data that is transmitted and received by Amazon's servers as described by user "stonewater" on the unofficial Amazon Echo forum. This method produces accurate and desirable results. However, it requires technological know-how with the aid of Request Maker for Chrome to accomplish the task.   Customer Reviews
REFERNCES https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/shopping/amazon-echo-vs-amazon-tap-speaker-comparison/ http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/3/11148776/amazon-echo-tap-speaker-price-availability-photos-video http://amazonadviser.com/2016/04/11/amazon-tap-is-now-on-sale-for-129-99/