Amazon’s virtual assistant is winning in a big way By Koh Wanzi
Amazon’s virtual assistant is winning in a big way By Koh Wanzi
Amazon may not actually have been at CES 2017, but its virtual assistant stole the show in a big way. Every day brought a fresh deluge of announcements about devices with Alexa built in, or products that could be controlled by Alexa.
Alexa is one of those things that make the slick future we’ve seen in movies and science fiction seems a little closer. Dim the lights with a simple voice command. Order a pizza by talking to your table lamp. Make the robot vacuum go to work by yelling at your Echo device.
It’s a tantalizing vision of a unified smart home, one where you can even ask a router in Linksys’ Velop mesh Wi-Fi system to read out the Wi-Fi password to you. In a time where it can be difficult to make sense of the myriad smart devices vying for a place in our homes, Alexa promises to provide an easy and intuitive way to get a hold of your device ecosystem.
In addition, Alexa is moving out of the home and into the mobile space. The Huawei Mate 9 comes pre-installed with an Alexa app in the US, but the more interesting development is Alexa’s presence in the automotive space. Ford, Hyundai, and Volkswagen have put Alexa in their dashboards, giving users an alternative to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
This allows users to turn on the lights at home or call up a Spotify playlist right from their car, adding a whole new level of connectivity for when you’re on the road.
Taking over the world, one device at a time Brinks Home Security ARRAY
Brinks’ smart lock connects via Wi-Fito the cloud, while the smartphone app allows you to operate the lock remotely and schedule user access, issue keypad codes, and enable push notifications when users unlock it. It works with Alexa-enabled devices, so you can control it from your Echo as well.
Lenovo Smart Assistant
The Smart Assistant is essentially Lenovo’s equivalent of the Amazon Echo. Tall and cylindrical, it comes with Alexa built in, which means it can theoretically do everything that Amazon’s smart speaker can. It is available in light green, gray or orange fabric, and features eight farfield microphones for picking up your voice from across the room.
LG Smart InstaView refrigerator
There’s also LG’s new flagship fridge, where integration with Alexa lets you quickly adjust its power settings or order groceries by just barking instructions at it. The 29- inch touchscreen display can turn translucent to show you the fridge’s contents, but the most notable thing is the ability to look up recipes, call up weather forecasts and play music.
headsets come with an emphatic warning against wearing the headset for more than an hour. Fortunately, the next-generation of VR headsets already look more portable. At CES, HTC was showing off the TPCast, an accessory for the Vive that makes it completely wireless, and Lenovo announced a new VR headset that weighs just 350g.
