My favorite Alexa skill has made the $50 Echo Dot worth every penny

For the last two months, I've been living with five new roommates: Four guys, and an Amazon Echo Dot.

The Dot was something of a housewarming present purchased by my boyfriend when I moved in at the end of May, and it lives nestled on the bedside table. While I've only been living with the Dot for a short time, I've already found my favorite way to use the device: Sleep Sounds.

Sleep Sounds is an Alexa skill that's free to enable on any Alexa-enabled device. The skill essentially acts as a white-noise machine, playing sounds like cicadas, frogs, city rain, and grandfather clock.

My personal favorite is thunderstorms, which provides a soothing backdrop of steady rain and rolling thunder as I sleep.

Alexa has 10,000 skills in all, and I've only sampled a few. In the months and years to come, I look forward to testing out all the device has to offer and getting used to having another computer in my home. Right now, I'm just slowly working on getting used to talking to Alexa and having her handle basic tasks for me. (Yes, I call it a "her." I live with four guys, it's nice to have some female company!)

But for now, I couldn't be more satisfied with the Dot acting as a white-noise machine. Sure, there are cheaper machines on the market, and I've tried a $300 high-end version that I loved. But the Dot is small and unobtrusive, sounds good, and I can activate Sleep Sounds from bed (or even from across the room) with a simple phrase.

For $50, you get what you pay for - along with all the other benefits of owning an Alexa device.