Amazon Launches Its Alexa Enabled Smart Speakers Amazon Echo, Dot, And Plus In India
E-commerce giant Amazon launched its Alexa-enabled smart speakers Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot in India. The devices are priced at Rs 9,999, 4,999, and Rs 14,999 respectively.
To purchase the speakers, customers have to send an invitation at Amazon. For a limited period of time, the company is offering an introductory discount of 30 per cent on the purchase of Echo devices and also one year of Prime membership. Speakers will ship beginning the week of October 30. If invited, you will get an email from Amazon with details about the purchase.
Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot are voice-controlled speakers designed entirely around your voice. Alexa is the brain behind Echo, just ask, and Alexa will answer questions, play music, read the news, set timers and alarms, check the calendar, provide sports scores, control lights at home, and much more. With Echo’s far-field voice control, you can do all this from across the room using just your voice.
Amazon claims that they have customized Alexa according to the Indian audience including English voice with local pronunciations and intonation. It also supports for music titles, names, and places in additional non-English languages. Third-party developers in India are already building new, localised skills for Alexa, and over 10,000 skills will be available for customers in India, including skills from Saavn, Times of India, ESPNcricinfo, Ola, Freshmenu, and more.
“Tens of millions of customers are already using Alexa, and today we’re excited to bring her to India with an all-new experience designed from the ground up for our customers in India,” said Dave Limp, Senior Vice President, Amazon Devices and Services. “The combination of Alexa and Echo provides customers with hands-free access to music, weather, news, information, and more.
Amazon Echo—Rs 9,999
Echo is a hands-free, voice-controlled speaker that allows you to access Alexa from anywhere in the room with far-field voice control. It uses on-device software to detect the wake word, “Alexa.” When Echo detects the wake word, the device’s light ring turns blue and begins streaming the request to the cloud where Alexa processes the request. Since Alexa is built in the cloud and leverages Amazon Web Services, the Alexa Voice Service is always getting smarter and adding more functionality.
Amazon Echo features 2.5-inch woofer, dedicated tweeter, Dolby processing, and has 360° omni-directional audio.
You can stream music directly from popular music services such as Amazon Prime Music, Saavn, TuneIn, and more. Echo is also Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream music directly from your phone or tablet.
It comes in three colours- white, grey, and black.
Echo Plus—Rs 14,999
Echo Plus includes all the features of Echo, including room-filling sound powered by Dolby and a far-field microphone array, and adds a built-in smart home hub.
With the built-in smart home hub, Echo Plus makes connecting to compatible smart home devices easy. Just say “Alexa, discover my devices,” and Echo Plus will automatically discover and set up compatible lights, without the need for additional hubs or apps. This simple set-up works initially with a variety of ZigBee-supported products from Philips Hue.
Echo Dot- Rs 4,999
Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice controlled device that is powered by Alexa and uses the same far-field voice recognition as Echo. Echo Dot has a sleek and compact design and comes in either black or white. Use the built-in speaker to talk with Alexa and listen to music, or Echo Dot can directly connect to speakers through Bluetooth or by using a 3.5mm stereo cable, enabling you to add Alexa to any home entertainment system.
