As a virtual assistant, Alexa is quite good: it responds quickly, often knows what it is you want, and is capable of doing many things.

As something I want to actually use, it’s terrible, all thanks to Amazon’s relentless upsells after Alexa responds. That’s my takeaway from Jen Tuohy’s review of the new Echo Pop, where it attempted to get her to pay for a louder alarm after she asked it to set an alarm. What a nightmare.