Amazon had its Echo speaker available earlier with the Alexa integration. Now, the company is making it better with a voice assistant that isn’t just a speaker but has a touchscreen and a better integration and more features – Amazon Echo Show. A differently designed device, this was leaked quite a few times before the official announcement was made.
Google and Amazon are neck-to-neck when it comes to bringing smart devices to homes and this is an effort to make it better than the speakers offered by both the companies, Echo from Amazon and Home from Google. The Echo Show is going to be available from June 28th and the price is set at $230, with pre-ordering starting today.
The Amazon Echo Show has a 7-inch touchscreen on the front and the Amazon Alexa voice assistant helps in several functions. The Show also has a camera on the front. One of the new features is the ability to make calls to friends who have the Echo or Alexa app on other devices.
Using Alexa is quite easy because you just have to mention it to the voice assistant and the call is made (on the introduction video, it was the video calls shown). Another feature is the ability to connect to Ring or Arlo cameras and easily check the areas that are under surveillance with those cameras. You can control lights, adjust the thermostat, view camera feeds, and it does seem to do things that are helpful and that were not possible on the Echo speaker because of the lack of a touchscreen.
With the Echo Home, you would be able to stream music from Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and TuneIn. It is the Dolby-powered dual speakers located on the bottom of the speaker that helps in a good sound output.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQqxCeHhmeU
It is not only these two but also Microsoft, who is planning to come up with a voice assistant speaker and is slowly giving out some details on what to expect, and that would be a competitor against Google Home and Amazon Echo. The Echo currently is leading the market share with about 71% of the sales and the Home as well as the upcoming speaker from Microsoft should give it a tough year ahead to maintain the share.
Amazon will add voice calling and messaging on all Echo devices and the Alexa app; Amazon says the feature, called Alexa Calling, will go live later today.
