The latest smart speaker, Amazon Echo, has finally gone on sale in the UK, over a year after being released in the US.
Amazon's new Echo Speakers launched in UK on September 29, according to express.co.uk, the Wi-Fi speaker is costing £149.99, and also allowing you to bring the power of Alexa, Amazon's all-new virtual assistant.
Amazon Echo is a home audio speaker, in a cylindrical shape, which integrates a personal voice assistant named Alexa. It is very much like Siri, Cortana and Google Now. It's always on and always connected, with Wi-Fi that allows you to sit on your home network and access cloud services.
It also allows you to play music from services like Spotify, Prime Music and Pandora without any computer or smartphone
Alexa is the wake-up word for Amazon Echo. Its digital voice assistant that obey any of the user's spoken commands, from searching the web for answers to playing music. Echo is constantly learning and it is also adapting to your speech patterns, vocabulary and preferences.
In an article from mirror.co.uk , it was stated that Amazon claims that around 3,000 "skills" are currently supported by Amazon Echo and Alexa voice commands, which is a pretty impressive number.
According to skills shown in amazonechouk.com, the speaker has already boasted Uber, Skyscanner, National Rail, and JustEat in to the list of its skills. Also it has included several smart home appliances - the Philips Hue and Netatmo being one of them.
Amazon Echo consist seven mics hidden inside and around the edges of the speaker, which use beam-forming and improved noise cancellation, so that it can hear your command from anywhere in the room.
Alexa Skills support for multiple timers and alarms, IFTTT support, integration with Google Calendar, listening to Audible audio books and re-order Prime-eligible items from Amazon. It can help in ordering your favourite food from Just Eat, according to a demonstration shown at the UK launch event.
