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Amazon along with the Echo Spot and New Fire TV 2017 models also expands its smart Alexa assistant enabled devices including Echo Plus, Revamped Echo, Echo Button, and Echo Connect. With this announcement, Amazon makes clear that the company wants you to be talking to its assistant at every point in your day, in every room of your house, no matter who you are.
The company introduced the high-end Echo Plus that doubles as a smarter home hub; a set of button accessories aimed at making the Echo more of an entertainment device; and the Echo Connect – a $34.99 speakerphone box that plugs into the traditional landline connection and uses your home phone number.
Amazon also revealed updates to the Echo, which hasn’t seen an upgrade since its 2014 launch, and BMW also announced it will put Alexa-friendly microphones and the voice assistant in select BMW and Mini models in 2018.
Amazon Echo Plus – can now make smart home set-up as easy as, well, screwing in a light bulb. Shortly after twisting the bulb into the socket, the Echo Plus picked it up in a scan for smart devices in the room, named it and was able to control it within 15 seconds.
Every version of the higher-end Echo will also ship with its own Philips Hue lightbulb, priced at $149.99 and will be released on October 31, 2017.
Amazon’s also making a new push to style the Echo as a more active entertainment device. Echo Buttons, which would look at home on any game show set, connect to an Echo device via Bluetooth; the firm showed off a trivia game demo, where players buzzed in when they knew the answer. Echo Buttons will be available as a pair for $19.99.
Amazon Echo now comes with a price drop $99, and a redesign that makes it more compact, a little shorter and a little squatter. A new “routines” features allow Echo to trigger multiple actions – turning on lights, opening the blinds, starting the coffee maker – from a single phrase such as “Alexa, good morning.” Both the Echo and Echo Plus will get free outbound calls to any number in the US, Canada, and Mexico, pulling contacts from your smartphone.
