Amazon Echo now available for all US customers to purchase, ships July 14
Amazon on Tuesday officially opened up orders to the general public for its Echo accessory, a Siri-like, always-on virtual assistant that exists in a standalone tubular speaker.
The Amazon Echo was previously limited as an invite-only purchase, but starting Tuesday, anyone in the U.S. can place an order for the voice-driven hardware. The online retailer has said that orders will begin shipping to U.S. customers on July 14.
The Echo actually launched last November, and to date it has earned a 4.5-star rating from reviewers on Amazon. The handsfree, always-on device delivers information, news, music, weather, traffic and more, and is priced at $179.99.
"The customer response to Amazon Echo has been incredibly positive, and we've been working hard to build more as quickly as possible," said Greg Hart, Vice President, Amazon Echo. "We are grateful to our early customers for their incredible engagement and for providing us with invaluable feedback to help shape Echo as it evolves--with their help, we've been able to add features like Audible, Pandora, home automation, sports scores, calendar, and more. We're excited to get Echo into the hands of even more customers and continue to invent new features and experiences."
Echo uses far-field voice recognition with an array of seven microphones, allowing it to hear the user clearly around the room. It also utilizes beam-forming technology to combine the signals from individual microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, and even competing speech.
The Echo is designed with advanced dual downward firing speakers that produce 360 degrees of omni-directional, room filling audio. Amazon says the device gets smarter over time, because its "brain" actually exists in the cloud.
Since November, Amazon has added support for Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue connected home products, as well as Pandora, Audible, Google Calendar, If This Then That, sports scores, traffic, Prime Music stations, and customized news. The Echo can also be used to re-order Prime-eligible products.
The Amazon Echo was previously limited as an invite-only purchase, but starting Tuesday, anyone in the U.S. can place an order for the voice-driven hardware. The online retailer has said that orders will begin shipping to U.S. customers on July 14.
The Echo actually launched last November, and to date it has earned a 4.5-star rating from reviewers on Amazon. The handsfree, always-on device delivers information, news, music, weather, traffic and more, and is priced at $179.99.
"The customer response to Amazon Echo has been incredibly positive, and we've been working hard to build more as quickly as possible," said Greg Hart, Vice President, Amazon Echo. "We are grateful to our early customers for their incredible engagement and for providing us with invaluable feedback to help shape Echo as it evolves--with their help, we've been able to add features like Audible, Pandora, home automation, sports scores, calendar, and more. We're excited to get Echo into the hands of even more customers and continue to invent new features and experiences."
Echo uses far-field voice recognition with an array of seven microphones, allowing it to hear the user clearly around the room. It also utilizes beam-forming technology to combine the signals from individual microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, and even competing speech.
The Echo is designed with advanced dual downward firing speakers that produce 360 degrees of omni-directional, room filling audio. Amazon says the device gets smarter over time, because its "brain" actually exists in the cloud.
Since November, Amazon has added support for Belkin WeMo and Philips Hue connected home products, as well as Pandora, Audible, Google Calendar, If This Then That, sports scores, traffic, Prime Music stations, and customized news. The Echo can also be used to re-order Prime-eligible products.
Comments
Didn't buy it when I got the invite for $99, sure won't buy it now. Amazing how companies have figured out a way to get us to pay them to put products that funnel purchases and content requests directly to them. you would think for the right to sit in my house and be the sole source of my shopping list creation and music streaming, they would pay me.
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"that exists in a standalone tubular standalone speaker"
That would be standalone then?
I don't understand, what's the use case for this? When you think about anyone who is okay with having one of these in their home already has either an iPhone, Android, or Windows phone with this functionality built-in? And you have to pay $180 to boot?
I don't understand, what's the use case for this? When you think about anyone who is okay with having one of these in their home already has either an iPhone, Android, or Windows phone with this functionality built-in? And you have to pay $180 to boot?
Essentially it is a precursor to being able to order anything you want on Amazon just by talking to Echo.
It'll be interesting for the owners when a TV advert comes on for it and the woman in the ad says "Echo, order me a new washing machine" and suddenly, thousands on Americans have a washing machine on order because their Echo heard the TV and thought it was a command.
You know the one where Safari downloads a listening plugin that is always attached to the microphone of your laptop/device.
This snooping (because it is just what this is) has to stop. Do you want your conversations passed to the Government? I'm sure there is a feed somewhere. So you don't think that you have anything to hide. That's what Winston Smith thought.
This has to stop.
Siri ? No
Cortana ? No
This thing ? Never in a gazillion years.
Of course, the proof is in how it works in practical daily use and I suspect it's probably as frustrating to use as Siri sometimes is and very limited in its capabilities.
One of the many reasons that I wouldn't personally buy it is because for music, it's not stereo.
The re-ordering capability on Prime is practically useless, IMO. I've never bought anything on Amazon that needed to be "re-filled".
If this does everything it's claimed to and if the sound is decent, I don't think that $180 is outrageous. Most of the small amp/speaker systems for phones/pods cost that much.
Creepy prediction. The solution to any problem in life is a product, sold by Amazon.
Amazon seem to be taking a leaf out of Google's book.
You know the one where Safari downloads a listening plugin that is always attached to the microphone of your laptop/device.
This snooping (because it is just what this is) has to stop. Do you want your conversations passed to the Government? I'm sure there is a feed somewhere. So you don't think that you have anything to hide. That's what Winston Smith thought.
I don't think this device is at the level of "Google-creepy" yet, but, once in your home... double-plus ungood.
I recall someone here (Solipsism?) saying he had one and it worked quite well, especially in terms of the voice control.
It's not even the creepiness level because I'm used to it with the electronics of now, but the price for the value.
I don't see how a $180 tube can effectively replace the functionality of Siri or Google now, which are now attached at the wrist. As the tube, you lose the visual feedback component that is incredibly useful for performing heavy weight tasks.
I'm actually quite impressed with mine. It's speech recognition, while still limited in function (though they keep adding more to it) is impressive, even at long range (mine's in the corner of the kitchen, and it picks up what I tell it a good 20m away). Using it to build a shopping list is surprisingly intuitive and useful (when you're rooting through the pantry and you find you don't have something you need, just saying, Alexa, add "x" to my shopping list" becomes second nature).
Music playbacks better than I expected as well - a surprisingly big sound for a small speaker. Obviously it's not something you'd sit and listen to music on, but for incidental "background" music, it's great.
It's also a very well made piece of hardware.
As someone else said earlier in the thread, if Apple had made this, everyone would be banging on about how amazing it is.
Got one and have been programming it using Amazon's Alexa SDK and Lambda functions for a while. It's crackerjack - really like it.
I hope this doesn't damage Amazon's finances (any more).
I wonder if you bought two if they'd argue?
Since more than a fair share of reading takes place, ahem, in the bathroom perhaps Amazon can skinny down the tube a little more and make it also work as a toilet paper holder. Of course they'll have to put a low pass filter on it to filter out anything less than ... 3. Now there's a job that the baby monitor listeners above can be glad they don't have. Imagine the scenario: long low frequency pause on Bob's bathroom Echo Tube = automatically schedule the delivery of another one pound block of Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar from Amazon to Bob - next day delivery, rush if Bob is an Amazon Prime member.