Yeah, I like apples and oranges too, but they don’t compare well…
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Lessee now. An always-listening electronic device that can understand spoken requests, and respond to those requests in both synthesized vocal reply AND by taking specified actions such as turning on lights.
Does that apply to both the tablet and the Echo Dot? Indeed it does.
They compare very well indeed. So much so in fact that Amazon just began marketing a device with a screen!! Except one does not hear quite as well as the other, and has an awkward invocation phrase.
Now had I been comparing my Echo Dot to my lawn mower, you might have had a point…
Yeah, way to bring a knife to a gunfight. Just add six more mics and far-field voice recognition to your tablet and see what happens. Just don’t turn your TV on because…
“One shortcoming I’ve discovered with the Echos’ mics—I’ve tested the original and the Dot—is that they have difficulty hearing you when the TV is loud or when loud music is playing (on either the Echo itself or from other speakers in the room). When Editor-in-Chief Jon Philips compared the original Echo’s microphone performance to that of the new Google Home, he found that Google’s product was much better at filtering out ambient noise.”
He should correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe his point was with regard to a comparison between devices designed specifically for sensitive and accurate speech recognition (the Echo line with their farfield microphone arrays) vs devices NOT designed around that functionality, but rather adapted to the purpose via the addition of a piece of software (tablets). So the achievement of a more equitable fruit-type comparison would require pitting (Ha! See what I did there?!) the Echo against the Google Home rather than some other device simply running Google Assistant.
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Smart move for Amazon. They put a $50 dot and a $50 tablet in a plastic box and sell it to you for $300. With Google you use GH and bring your own screen and get a better result, cheaper and more flexible…and you can actually turn the TV on and still use the smart speaker…now, that’s magik
I’ve seen the biggest possible with the echoes and dots recognizing speech is when there are deep voices talking in the room.
In my house I have two 17 year old sons, one 25 year old son, my dad and me… Alexa gets really confused and the ladies of the house are always telling us to shut up cause they are talking to Alexa.
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The new Amazon device has a much better speaker system then the dot’s as far as playing music. So you’d have to add a pretty good speaker as well to the set up you mention.
Powerful, room-filling speakers with Dolby processing for crisp vocals and extended bass response
Plus if you buy two, it’s $180 each. Not $300. So figure a 20% markup for the convenience of having everything in one device, one power cord, set up and ready to work out of the box. 
Many all in one devices cost more than the individual feature components would. You are paying for the convenience, but it’s worth it to a lot of people. Choice is good.
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Now you’re just bringing apples and oranges to a gun fight.
What both ‘systems’ are there to do is identical. Hear what you say, and respond to it. I agree fully with the statement of the superiority of the mic array, which is why I abandoned OK Google on the tablet. But really, my comment was more about the invocation phrase. That phrase used to drive my wife batty. And I know that even if GH hears you better than even Echo, it still won’t fly in my home because of the invocation phrase OK google.
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Just wait till you get 5 grandkids under 8 yelling at her to turn on the fan. 
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Actually, your comment was about how the recognition abilities of Google Assistant running on your wall-mounted tablet were inferior to that of your Echo/Dot:
That’s why when @SBDOBRESCU responded to you he quoted the text “wall mount tablet”.
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In which case we are back to the following Laundry list:
- has microphone
- hears what you say
- uses software to understand what you say
- responds to what you say, either verbally or via network action
Echo hears you better… and perhaps GH hears you even better than Echo.
Nonetheless, if we’re gonna go there, the mere fact that mic arrays hear you better than single mics does not make them wholly different things. It’s like saying I am a wholly different type of entity than is Uncle Ed, because he can’t hear you as well as I can.
Apples to oranges? That’s nonsense. It’s apples to apples. In the gun analogy, it would be a .22 to a shotgun… but they are both guns. It’s not Echo vs tin cans and string, or GH vs pencil and paper… and you are acting as if I never mentioned the invocation phrase. Which I did mention prior to the tablet, so, as long as we’re gettin’ all nitpicky and everything, means it had priority in my statement. I’ve mentioned before that the wife can’t stand OK Google as the invocation phrase.
But whatever. Enjoy your nitpickin’.
Does WAF go from 0 to 1 if she uses “Hey Google” instead? 
Sorry, just trying to lighten things up a bit in this room.
I think we can all agree that both of these products have their value adds as well as downfalls at this point in the game.
Anticipating the release of Geckle next, that merges and compensates for each other inadequacies.
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And if you guys are going to get bloody, have a sword fight instead. Much more entertaining than guns.
But you cannot use Tasker with your Dot…
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Sorry I have to agree with Dparker. You were clearly comparing how well each can hear you, and like he said you can not compare these 2 situations. The tablet has one mic that is probably covered up when mounted, and the Echo has 6 mics designed for picking up speech at a distance. Mount a fire tablet and try to talk to Alexa and let me know how it goes.
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I am starting to think that Apple and AT&T have similar business strategies. Watch for trending tech and then try to jump on the band wagon.