Amazon USA has today unveiled a brand new product called “Echo”, a $199 connected speaker that’s always-on and listening for commands like Siri, which it can then respond to with information or by triggering a task. Amazon says that its black, cylindrical speaker is always connected to the cloud and will provide information, music, news, weather, and more. For a limited time, the company will offer Echo for $99 to Prime members who receive an invite.
According to Amazon, the Echo’s built-in voice recognition can hear users from across the room. It begins working as soon as it hears the wake word, “Alexa”. Tucked under Echo’s light ring is an array of seven microphones. These sensors use beam-forming technology to hear you from any direction. Its dual downward-firing speakers produce 360° omni-directional audio to fill the room with immersive sound. Echo provides hands-free voice control for Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.
“Echo’s brain is in the cloud, running on Amazon Web Services so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time. The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.
Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream your favorite music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet. Also, it doesn’t stop working when you’re away from home. With the free companion app on Fire OS and Android, plus desktop and iOS browsers, you can easily manage your alarms, music, shopping lists, and more.”
While Siri, Google Now, and Cortana can all accomplish similar tasks on your smartphone, Amazon surely seems to think there’s a place in the living room for something like this. Check out this hilarious promo video to find out how Echo works:
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
Looks promising. But again we canadian have to wait.
Want it in French
+1 on that
Seems kind of odd that its called Echo but named Alexa
Hilarious? More like dumb with bad acting.
So it’s a device you put in your private home that it is continuously listening to everything you say and sends it to a mainframe computer or cloud, but only interacts when using its name. I see nothing wrong with that.. :p
When we grew up watching Star Trek (“Computer…”) it seemed like such a good idea.
Canada no! Too bad I kinda fell for it! 🙂