FABRIQ Portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart Speaker With Amazon Alexa

This is an odd little thing. It filled a niche I didn't know there was. Considering its size it has amazing sound. It has decent battery life. It fits right in to the Amazon control/entertainment environment. It is not voice activated. You have to push a button. That may be a good thing, just depends. I would warn it is a little slower than the Echo so it doesn't always react to the button. Until I figured out not to hold the button down I spent a lot of time yelling "stop I swear I did not say that...." So remember momentary contact or it just ignores you. If you are curious about the Echo etc. This is a way to dip your toe in it. This thing is still early on so the website is just a shell without any visible support pages.

Got this for Samsung SmartThings integration - using custom device handlers and SmartApps written by community members, this speaker can be used for TTS (Text to Speech) broadcasts when SmartThings events occur (light turns on/off, motion sensor, contact sensors report open/closed, etc.). For those who use it, works great w/webCore after adding the device to SmartThings, or you can use BigTalker, LanAnnouncer, etc.Pros: - Small, but sounds good for its size - Loud enough for my purposes - to be clearly heard in large family room - Looks very nice (I have the grey one) - DLNA capability (pretty much not mentioned anywhere) allows integration/use w/SmartThings as noted aboveCons: - Must be plugged in 24/7 for power - as noted by many others the battery life is miserable - Lost connection to network when powered down/powered back up - I had to reconnect it as if it had never been connected to my network. Since I'm going to have it on all the time this should not be an issue. - USB cord provided is short, about 3' - unless you're plugging in to a connection on the countertop next to it, you'll need a longer cordOverall appears will work very well for my purposes.

I bought three, planning to keep two plugged in & synced together for white noise at night, one of which my girlfriend can take with her to the kitchen/bathroom/etc when she needs. This mostly works, except for one huge nuisance that almost made me return them: every minute, the very bright LED ring flashes & lights up the whole room, making them unusable for my intended purpose. Thankfully I just spoke to Fabriq support, who acknowledged that everyone dislikes this behavior and said they're working on a software update that should be released in "a few weeks". I'll wait until the end of Feb to see if they're worth keeping.Other than that, there's a lot to like: they look good, feel well-constructed, were reasonably easy to set up, and the sound quality is fine.There are a few other minor nuisances:There's an obnoxiously-loud voice when turned on, connecting, etc. I leave them on all the time & plugged in so it's not a big deal, but if I were turning them off & on a lot I would hate it & would return it because of that.The minimum volume is still pretty loud. Annoying for listening to white noise at night; I couldn't place them on my nightstands like I planned, but from across the room it was OK.I haven't yet gotten Alexa to work. At all. I hit the speech button & it sort of beeps then does nothing. One time it said "something went wrong". I didn't really buy it for Alexa, but if I did it'd be a bummer. Maybe with some configuration I could get it working, but it's definitely not as easy as "turn it on, connect to wifi, sign into Alexa, and go"The mic, play/pause, and volume buttons are on this weird rubbery piece that blocks the charging port. That would sort of make sense if they were waterproof, but I don't think they are. Instead, it just means that since mine are always plugged in, the buttons are on this weird wobbly bit that won't close completely because the charging cable is in the way. It's bad design.

Do not buy this piece of junk!1. It doesn’t connect well even close to your WiFi.2. It randomly turns itself off, or disconnects for no reason.3. It doesn’t connect Bluetooth, you have to connect it to your WiFi. And it doesn’t connect well.4. It doesn’t sound very good compared to other speakers this size.5. Sometimes it will cycle turning itself on and off and on again until you factory reset it.6. Forget about multiple people being able to connect to it. It barely wants to work with just one phone.7. Even after a factory reset and firmware update, it still doesn’t work.8. Don’t waste your money on this.