After side-loading and a bit of tweaking, Alexa Calling worked today. It is magical. It’s definitely how trusted calling to home should work.

Some good things:

• Call quality was great
• The interaction to answer was very cool
• Sneak peak let me know if someone was there

Some areas of improvement:

• The angle of the interaction has a high tilt upward, so you can’t get a good view of a large room
• The device is stationary and designed not to swivel, which isn’t great when the person you’re talking to is roaming about the kitchen
• When a subject stands close to the screen, there’s a bit of an Echo

However, this interaction completely changes the “meh” experience from earlier to a great one. There is definitely an opportunity for others to release devices with Show capability but more features for video chat.