Long gone are the days of smart speakers and the ambitious Alexa voice assistant program. Amazon seems to be ready to move on to other ideas as it gets ready to phase-out most of the related cloud-based Alexa voice services. Still, there's a market ready to invest in simple connected devices that recognize simple voice commands. The new Amazon Echo Spot is a customizable smart alarm clock, featuring a variety of custom-designed clock faces and colors. It’s built for the nightstand, with a display that makes it easy to set and view alarms, see the time, weather, or song titles at a glance, and a simple directional speaker.
As Amazon details, the new Echo Spot devices build on the features that buyers recognized to be most valuable in the previous Echo smart speakers that already had a visible clock and alarm features. The semi-spherical shape is a good compromise between the former spherical smart speakers and the larger smart displays of the Echo Show range. Access to Alexa is now complemented with a simple display that reimagines the whole experience to the bare essentials.
The display on the new Echo Spots can be customized to fit different tastes with six different colors — orange, violet, magenta, lime, teal, and blue — and the possibility to mix and match colors with a variety of clock faces. Users can ask Alexa to set alarms by saying things like "Alexa, set a weekday alarm for 7am with soft jazz." There are four custom alarm sounds — Aurora, Daybreak, Endeavor, and Flutter, apart from music. And, if they want a bit more sleep when the alarm goes off they don't need to blame Alexa or say anything, they just need to tap the Echo Spot to snooze - the good o'fashioned way.
In terms of speaker design, the new Echo Spot includes a 1.73" front-firing directional full-range driver and that's it. Users can still ask Alexa to play their favorite song in the small speaker alarm-clock, and they can at least enjoy a visual animation in the display while music plays. When they want to skip a song, they can either ask Alexa, or simply tap the display.
And while Amazon is trying to reduce the chances that users make requests that require a connection to the cloud (which costs Amazon money), there are still "easter eggs such as asking “Alexa, how are you,” or “Alexa, good evening,” to see 10 unique response animations. Users can still ask "Alexa, tell me a joke" but the chances of Alexa actually being funny are now less than they ever where.
Users asking Alexa for weather reports will now simply see the temperature, along with an illustration — like a sun, rain cloud, or snowflake — appear on the screen. For users of the existing Amazon Echo range, the good news is that the new Echo Spot devices can still connect to other Alexa-enabled products, including the expanding range of smart home solutions that Amazon also sells, including cameras and doorbells. Learning from previous debacles, the new Amazon Echo Spot devices also have privacy controls, including a mic off button, and the ability to view and delete your voice recordings. More information is available in the Alexa Privacy Hub.
The new Amazon Echo Spot range is available now in Black, Glacier White, and Ocean Blue, for $79.99.
www.amazon.com
