Many people love to complain. I for one am super enthused to get my shopping chores in order. I'm just getting started with Amazon Fresh and have seen it both ways. I see outlandish prices on some items, and I see some items cheaper. Expecting to find any vendor in a ship to door environment with the lowest prices in the world on every item is not a realistic expectation. If you are a price shopper then the Wand is a great way to get this super organized. I'm building a spreadsheet. I usually buy the same things over and over again; my favorites. So bringing home the slips and scanning the items seems to be a great way to approach this as a science. The Wand is free. I'm also looking to stop spending 52 days (1 day per week x 52 weeks per year) every year just shopping. I have other things like my music I would like to pursue. Oh that's right this review is about the Dash Wand. Well it is a great little device. A nice addition to your arsenal of Alexa products. It is not intended to replace a Dot. So for those who want to spend nothing, and expect everything, you are going to be disappointed. For those who realize with such a tiny speaker there is no use playing back music on it, and that it is meant to be a shopping wizard, not a full blown echo device, they are going to love the little bugger. The bar code scanning feature is incredible. No need to type in a lot of words and do a search; one click and it is done. Of course if it is an item that Amazon does not carry that specific brand, an array of other choices shows up, and doesn't add anything to your shopping cart until you choose which one you are interested in. Please remember as it clearly states you need an Android or iOS phone to set this up, but NOT to use it. Once setup which only takes a minute you can then use Alexa. You also have access to a couple of settings through the Alexa app on your Fire Tablet or anywhere you have the Alexa app. Finally I think there is something that needs to be said about the psychology of free. When a kid works his paper route all summer long, saves up his money, and buys that new bike; he cherishes it. When the kid next door who is spoiled gets a new bike, he complains when he finds out that his bike doesn't have the same optional horn beeper that Jerry has and he throws a hissy fit. Wake up people, this is revolutionizing the way we shop for food, and once the Whole Foods acquisition occurs and Amazon brings massive purchases with a vast customer base the pricing will fall in line more like Costco organics, and delivered to your door. That is why Costco stock fell 7% the day Amazon announced the Whole Foods purchase. As a matter of fact they weren't the only food chain that tanked that day. This is a game changer. PS: I love Costco too but want my time back. One last thing, and very important worth noting. You want a Dash Wand AND an echo dot. You want the ability to be able to walk through the room and do a hands free voice request to the Dot and also play back music especially through a paired quality blue tooth speaker, or even via Amazon Basic Bluetooth receiver into your stereo. With the Dot you have access to the full suite of Alexa skills. Added onto that the Dash is superbly engineered to handle your shopping tasks; like I said, it enables you to treat it like a science. So purchase a Wand, and then take the $20 credit and apply it to a Dot purchase, and you have a real smart home kitchen ready for anything you want to throw at it. Another point worth mentioning is why do people complain because it does not do a perfect instant scan first time every time? It does it most of the time. Consider the multi-thousand dollar scanning station at your local supermarket. Most of the time it works but sometimes you scan it, and scan it, and scan it, and finally someone at the head terminal does a manual load of the item in their station and then it comes up on yours. Or let's say you are at Home Depot and the checkout person is using an expensive hand held wand to scan things in your basket, and many times have to do repeated scans to get it to work, even though most of the time it works perfect the first time. Why would you expect anything better out of a $20 device? Consider the alternative. Having to do a manual type in the text on every item. It's time to be thankful for how much it improves this chore, and not disdain the device because it occasionally still requires a little effort. No scanner made is a perfect product in terms of robotizing the chore. There is still some work to be done, but the inevitable end result is that once you get all of your favorites shopped through it should make your weekly chore a breeze.
I realize that you need to do an item by item review of every product.
Since it is not an all-day on standby device the pair of AAA batteries should last you a long time. There are a lot of things you can do with it besides order food. I won't go into a long list.