Amazon started selling their personal assistant-equipped speakers back in 2015. This week announced the company announced a whole array of gadgets centered around Alexa.
The biggest news though comes from Alexa itself though.
While we all know Alexa’s female voice, Amazon hired Samuel L. Jackson to offer a slightly different Alexa experience. The plan goes a little further than that and Amazon has announced that there will be more celebrity voices coming to Alexa in the future (Morgan Freeman please!!).
The weirdest gadget Amazon announced was definitely their microwave / oven combo with built-in Alexa. While it sounds weird in the beginning the use case is both pretty simple and kind of cool at the same time. Instead of putting your fries in the oven and setting it manually, just tell Alexa: “Alexa, get those fries ready!” or “Alexa please cook my salmon”. The Amazon Smart Oven will be available for 249.99$.
Amazon started an early adopters program to test out new products on an invitation-only basis. This way Amazon can test new devices with consumers in a more controlled setting, before the company releases them to customers worldwide.
The first two products available via this program are the Echo Loop and the Echo Glasses.
The Echo Loop is a small ring with, you guessed it Alexa implemented. You can take to the ring and it will reply with its tiny speakers. The demo showed a man asking Alexa in his ring what’s on his grocery list. To hear Alexa’s answer he held his hand near his ear.
The Echo Glasses are just a regular pair of glasses with Alexa. While this may instantly remind you of the no longer existing Google Glasses, they lack a camera as well as any AR capabilities. It’s similar to the Echo Loop, just a regular gadget with Alexa capabilities. What’s interesting with the Echo Glasses is that it has real speakers that point into the wearer’s ear instead of some bone-conducting speakers, as other companies like Zungle have. Maybe Amazon figured out a way to engineer the speakers that others cannot make out when Alexa tells you about your missed calls or new messages.
These sum up the most interesting gadgets from Amazon’s event. Other introductions included the new Echo Studio, a premium speaker with Dolby Atmos capabilities, revisions of the regular Amazon Echo as well as the Echo Dot, a new Echo Show with an 8 inch screen.
One last interesting announcement made is that Amazon will delete conversations from 3 to 8 months.
If Amazon actually does it is another thing, I would remain skeptical because of the numerous incidents from the past. Alexa will also let you delete all the stored data from the same day by telling her to do so.
What is your favourite product that Amazon has announced?
