Amazon launched Echo: Interactive device for the smart homes

Amazon launched “Echo” – a new interactive device for the smart homes. This revolutionary product looks a like a speaker but offers more than that. It can be considered as a virtual home assistant. It has a cloud memory which it uses for delivering its services. Unlike a Bluetooth device, it has to be plugged in to a socket. That’s not much of a task! Finally Amazon has responded to Microsoft’s “Cortana”, Apple’s “Siri” and “Google Now”. The user in the same room can give voice commands to the device. The device has great voice recognition abilities and is capable of learning speech patterns over the time. This helps in making it more familiar with the user’s requirements. Apart from streaming music, it can also heed to the commands like “play my personal playlist” or “what is the weather”. It can be asked Wikipedia questions and for getting news updates.

However, the product is not available for sale to public for now. It can only be brought through invitation. To get an invitation navigate to Amazon’s website and make a request for the same. Prime Amazon members can get this for a discounted price of $99. For other members it is available at a price of $199. The offer is for a limited time only, so interested people will have to hurry up. Though official release date has not been announced yet, you can expect it before the holiday season. The previous product of the Amazon i.e., Kindle was a great success with the customers and the same is expected from the Echo. Echo is capable of setting alarms (for example, by saying “set an alarm for 10 a.m.”), creating reminders, give information on weather, news, play music and answer questions just like its other counterparts from Apple and Google.

It’s comfortable; you don’t need to keep it in hand. Echo can be reached from any part of the room. Its hearing ability is quite strong. Since the day it was introduced, people have already started enjoying it. The introductory video has fetched 1.2 million views in a half a day or less. This Personal Assistant device with speaker can be used for making to do lists also. Echo makes use of your WiFi connection and the information is accessed from cloud storage. Amazon said that over the time new functionalities will be added to it. The device has 7 microphones which enable it to hear commands from anywhere in the room. The microphones are powerful enough to pick up your voice when the music is playing on full volume. Echo can stream music from TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music and so on, or it could be simply connected to your tab or phone via Bluetooth. The announcement came only a week after the announcement of TV streaming stick. It also released a new series of Kindle Fire tablets and Kindle e – readers last month. Amazon has opened up a whole new room of possibilities, but it can be known only with time how well its perceived by the users.

Images used in this news articles are taken from Official website of Amazon Echo – Amazon.com. And these images are used for publication purpose only.