Earlier this year Lenovo unveiled its answer to the Amazon Echo. It’s called the Lenovo Smart Assistant and, like the Echo, it uses Amazon’s Alexa voice service and it’s expected to sell for $180 if and when Lenovo ever gets around to selling it.
But it turns out Lenovo also has another smart speaker. It’s called the Lenovo Home Assistant Pack and it’s a much cheaper option, at $80. But it’s also not exactly a standalone device.
The Home Asisstant is designed to work with a Lenovo Tab 4 series tablet.
Lenovo’s Home Assistant is a 3 watt speaker with two microphones for far-field voice detection, allowing the device to pick up your voice from across the room.
It’s designed to attach to the side of a Lenovo Tab 48, Tab 4 8 Plus, Tab 4 10 or Tab 4 10 Plus tablet, giving the Alexa-enabled smart speaker a screen, which makes it more like a quirky alternative to the Amazon Echo Show than to Amazon’s speaker-only devices.
But if you were hoping for a device that doesn’t need a screen to work… well, Lenovo hasn’t launched one yet. But there’s no shortage of alternatives on the market these days.