Available only by invitation, earlier today Amazon took the wraps off their latest hardware project a Bluetooth speaker and voice recognition system they’re calling Echo. It’s actually pretty interesting. The Amazon Echo mimics the always-listening functionality found in Motorola’s smartphone (or charging iPhones) and allows you to speak commands, search queries or create lists by speaking voice commands.
Because have to re-speak commands is never fun, the Echo is actually outfitted with 7 microphones to hear you no matter where you are in the room — near or far. And it’s smart too. Because it’s internet connected, Amazon says the Echo will continually learn, adding additional functionality over time. As of right now, here’s what the Echo can do:
- News, weather, and information: Hear up-to-the-minute weather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn.
- Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.
- Alarms, timers, and lists: Stay on time and organized with voice-controlled alarms, timers, shopping and to-do lists.
- Questions and answers: Get information from Wikipedia, definitions, answers to common questions, and more.
- More coming soon: Echo automatically updates through the cloud with new services and features.
The Echo will also have a companion app for Android devices to help manage things like alarms, shopping lists, music and all that stuff listed above. There’s no solid release date, only a vague “in the coming weeks” launch was given. Pricing is $200 or $100 for Amazon Prime members, but only for a limited time and you’ll need to request and invite here .
Overall, it’s not a bad speaker for what it offers, of course we’ll need to hear how well it performs in person before we pull the trigger on a purchase. What do you guys think?
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