Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsTap has potential. I like it but it could have been the most important portable audio-sharing device on the market but, well...
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2016
There are things about this cool gizmo that are really great and things that are such screwups that it really will come down to the screwups for you to decide whether to get a Tap.
First, I had bought a long-gone-now Dot. If it had a battery in it, it would be perfect! The sound is better than I expected, but I bought it mostly for streaming music to my desktop stereo or my main stereo. So far in a few weeks, sitting next to the TV, it has only false-alarm triggered once when someone named Alexandra was being addressed. Pretty good track record.
But, for the Tap, first the Good: At moderate to lower volume, the sound is pretty decent and is clear enough to understand speech or lyrics, an obvious equalization choice. The dynamics are, understandably, compressed, a good move. There is no thunderous bass, of course. The device, though, does double, so there is output that lets you follow the rhythm, if not feel it. The voice recognition is pretty good out of the box, but I suspect that I am speaking exactly the English Echos are designed to hear best. It feels reasonably solid and the switches you really need are flush buttons (mic and power) and the controls for music (<<, >, >>, Vup, Vdwn) are on top under a slip-free membrane, so if your hand are greasy from that grilled picnic chow, you should be able to operate the unit. The power button is on the back near the bottom and is wisely backlight when the unit is on. Eventually, the Tap will tell you it's batteries are getting weak. Power button also switches the unit to Bluetooth and pairing. There is a 1/8" standard stereo input for playing your mp3 player or mini-tv or little travel radio through the Tap and there's a micro-USB connector for charging. The included 1.0A charger wallwart-let works quickly, the same little good quality charger that comes with all Kindle/Echo items, and there is a reasonable length USB cable in the box. The bottom of the Tap is non-skid, some synthetic rubbery-ish slightly cushy sheet that means your Tap will probably not slide off of whatever it's sitting on. And, the coolest thing is that the Tap COMES WITH a charging cradle that is simplicity itself: Just plop Tap onto it and there you go. The contact points are brass. Ask anyone who owns a boat why this is a smart thing. Lastly, there is a row of LEDs at the top that tell you what Tap is doing while in the midst of an operation or command or charging, where the mic is and above the Mic Switch. The good news for most privacy lovers is that the default position for the mic is "off." It's NOT listening all the time the way that the Echo and Dot are, which have muting switches for their mics.
Now the Bad: Unless you have the Alexa App installed in ANOTHER smart device (smartphone, tablet), you're going to be very frustrated using Tap as a wireless device. I've been waiting for well over a month for Alexa to install in my Moto X with all the system updates, etc. Every other app goes or updates. Alexa just won't go. *sigh* Thankfully, I have a Fire HD7, a killer value in its own right, and once the FireOS was updated to accept it, I installed Alexa with no problems, so I used that device to set up Tap. The rest of the setup went the usual misfire or two that is apparently normal for FireOS devices in my experience, but it's been flawless since that first foray. I have not paired a BT source yet. But here is where I have a MAJOR gripe: You can't use both radios at the same time. If you're streaming Wifi, you can't re-kick it out on BT, and you can't do the reverse, either. But there is another BIG shortcoming: You can't plug something into the Aux 1/8" input and then send it out by BT or Wifi! That would make this the PARTY MONSTER if you could take someone's mp3 player or even an old cassette (huh?) boombox headphone output and then send THAT out by Wifi or BT so other wireless devices could "hear" and play it! BIG missed party-hubbing feature that could make a beach party pretty amazingly different, with all the various speakers sprinkled around the beach or camp-out or barbecue or whatever. That's a big miss and I doubt it's fixable by a firmware update. Shame. But there is another place that Tap misses big in sharing music: Why is there NO LINE OUT like on the Echo and Dot?? You can't stream out of your phone to the Tap and have it send the audio into a bigger stereo setup! Again, in a party situation, it would allow anyone to take their turn playing their playlist without any messing with cables. And most big stereos have no BT or Wifi, so... If the mission of the Tap is to share your music, it falls short in some key big ways. And that's important because as you raise the volume, the device, which has obvious DSP in it, trims out the low end in order to hop up the midrange. So to play louder, the sound becomes less full, and you can hear it each tap of the volume up. Meh. There should be a true LINE OUT, not a headphone out, so that all the Tap is doing is taking either the BT or Wifi stream and sending it un-messed to an amp. That would really pull it all together and make this the most indispensable music playing/sharing gizmo on the market at any price.
Now the Middlin: The fabric is definitely purposeful. It's coarse so you'll have a good grip on it, even with those cookout greased hands. Feels like a poly/nylon blend, so it should be very durable, too, but its open texture will make it very attractive to the first cat who accidentally bumps up against it. Yikes! The aforementioned default of the mic being off unless you press the mic button should be assignable. It should be possible to reverse the default to work like the Echo or Dot. I would also like to be able to voice control the volume or player controls. One of my primary uses for Tap is to play music in the bathroom while I'm in the shower. I love hearing music but don't like ads on the radio. The shower is really the only place for many people where you can be away from everyone else for a short while every day. Driving doesn't do that because of all the knuckleheads on the road. I would PREFER to have a good radio with Aux In in the bathroom and use a Line Out from the Tap, and I don't want to take the Dot away from my desk/stereo setup where I have tons of gear set up. Dot will restream out Wifi on BT, but it has no battery, so that makes it really an indoors-only device. Dot also has a Headphone Out, which is close enough to line out and actually is pretty okay sounding. So, if I want to play it loud while in the shower, Tap loses low end. Shame.
So, it's inexpensive, it works, sounds decent at moderate volume, the charger cradle is nice, and you can listen to either Wifi, which is really what it's made for, or BT. But you can't kick Wifi back out as BT like you can with Dot, a big shortcoming. And there is no way to kick the audio back out by wire, either. A big shortcoming. And you can't voice control the Tap, such an obvious function to be able to select, simply by reversing the default on the Mic button that it's hard to believe it's not there.
I suppose it's possible that, in time, as with providing Alexa to Gen1 FireTV boxes and Gen3 Fire Tablets, these Alexa-centric devices will all get firmware updates, as Amazon has promised, to enable new features or capabilities. After all, Gen2 iTouch owners were told rumours of BT but it wasn't there... until it was! Perhaps the ability to kick Wifi back out as BT will come to Tap. However, they can never send hardwired audio out the jack, and that's a pity. But if they can do the BT kick AND allow reversing of the Mic button, that will go a long way to making this a MUCH more useful device for more OBVIOUS purposes that just didn't get done.
Here's hoping!
