The new device from Amazon was designed for families as well as tech-savvy users and can be placed anywhere in the house, evigo.com reports.
The 9' device runs on Amazon Web Services and has a built-in speakers system, as well as a receiver and can be activated when users say “Alexa”. The device lets users stream music from Spotify, iTunes and Pandora.
Furthermore, the device can be used as a shopping tool which will add items to the users Amazon shopping cart. The device can actually talk back.
The Echo can be bought for USD 199, but Amazon Prime members can get it for just USD 99 for a limited time. In order to buy, users have to request an invitation from Amazon.com. There is also a dedicated app that can help manage the device and can be downloaded for Fire and Android devices.
Amazon’s speaker can learn a user’s speech pattern or his or her preferences. The Echo has been in development since 2010 in Amazon’s Lab126 facility in Silicon Valley.
The design and roll-out wouldn’t be possible without the company’s acquisition of smaller voice-recognition companies including British Evi, a text-to-speech company Ivona and voice recognition technology company Yap.
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