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Amazon announces Echo, the talking speaker

by on07 November 2014



Will be more successful than Fire phone

We are quite sure that most our readers didn't get the Amazon Fire phone and if you read about it you will agree that it was one of the biggest flops of 2014. Amazon didn’t stop there – now it wants to offer a Siri-like talking speaker and sell it to you for $199.

Of course the company wants to reward its loyal Amazon Prime customers by offering them the same speaker for $99 for a limited time only, but even at this price, it is a tough sell. 

Seven microphones, two speakers, one Thanksgiving

Amazon Echo is a portable speaker with seven microphones that can answer some voice queries and in case you’re wondering why it costs $199 – welcome to the club. We have learned to be very sceptical about any voice driven technology as Google Now and Siri still have some serious issues and flaws and we don’t think that Amazon has the resources or expertise to make things better than Google or Apple.

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The cylindrical speaker should be able to tell you what day it is, what the weather is like, set alarms, ask Wikipedia about Abraham Lincoln’s bio or ask some world crucial questions such as how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon. (Just in case there are no heroin addicts around. Ed)

My favourite question from Amazons official Echo webpage was: "When is Thanksgiving?" 

I wonder if the speaker can tell the difference between Canadian and US Thanksgiving.

Since this answering cylinder has seven microphones, it should be able to keep track of your and your family’s habits even better and fill Amazon in on the necessary details. That way you will all be showered with even more “relevant” ads.

$199 wireless speaker or something else?

Since this is essentially a wireless speaker with a few extra features, it will let you play Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. You will be able to play Pandora, Spotify or anything else via a Bluetooth connection and your phone or tablet. Of course there will be an app for that, but this is really not a big deal for such a pricey device.

The speaker comes with easy setup, fast WiFi, Bluetooth as well as the ability to switch off the microphone (my favourite feature), action button and light ring. For $199 the LED light ring should look like the Las Vegas strip.

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Inside the cylinder Amazon packed the aforementioned seven microphones, a volume ring, bass reflex port, 2.5-inch woofer and 2-inch tweeter. They are sitting on top of each other which, from acoustic point of view, cannot be a good idea, but we hope that Amazon can prove us wrong.

Even at $99 we think this is an incredibly hard sell, but at $199 it becomes really hard to describe. Maybe some geek will buy this to impress an unfortunate girl in the hopes of turning her into his girlfriend, but our experience with voice search is that it will most likely fail, just like the daft seduction strategy. You might buy it to frustrate your extended family and we see a number of opportunities in this niche. Even if you want one, you will have to get an invite to buy one.

Joking aside, the Echo speaker could have a chance if it was just one component in a comprehensive home automation system, a control unit that would allow you to adjust the temperature, open the garage doors or adjust the lighting. Sadly Amazon didn’t mention this and it probably has no plans to offer anything similar with the Echo.

Let's see how this one works for Amazon. It will probably sell better than the Fire phone, which set the bar too low even for James Cameron.

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