Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers and smart displays has exploded in recent years… but one thing the company hasn’t offered is a portable, battery-powered Echo. Now the company has one of those too. The new Amazon Echo Input is a compact, 360-degree speaker with up to 10 hours of battery life while playing music, […]
Tag: alexa
Amazon Fire TV Blaster brings voice control to your TV for $35
Amazon’s latest Fire TV gadget combines is a $35 gadget called the Fire TV Blaster, and while the name makes it sound like some sort of gaming accessory, it’s really an add-on that lets you use your voice to control a TV, cable box, soundbar, and other accessories. Designed to be used with a Fire TV device […]
Amazon Echo Show now comes in 5, 8, and 10 inch models
A few months after introducing the Echo Show 5, Amazon has added another model to its Echo Show line of smart displays. The Amazon Echo Show 8 features an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel touchscreen display, 10 watt stereo speakers, and a 1MP front-facing camera (with a shutter that covers it when it’s not in […]
Amazon adds wearables to its Echo lineup (Echo Buds, Echo Frames, and Echo Loop)
Amazon unveiled 8 new Echo products today, including updates to its smart speaker and smart display lineup. But the company is also entering new territory with a line of wearable Echo devices that let you interact with the company’s Alexa voice service on the go. Amazon’s Echo Buds are $130 wireless, noise-cancelling earbuds with Alexa […]
Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube supports Dolby Vision HDR, speedier voice controls
Amazon is launching a bunch of new and updated Fire TV products this fall, led by a 2nd-gen Fire TV Cube media streamer with support for hands-free Alexa. Fun fact: the original Fire TV Cube may have sold for more than twice the price of an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, but it actually had […]
Amazon’s $90 Echo Show 5 is a smaller, cheaper smart display
Amazon’s 3rd-gen Echo Show smart display is called the Amazon Echo Show 5… which sort of makes sense because the name refers to the screen size rather than the generation. Rather than replacing the 2nd-gen Echo Show, the new model will be sold alongside it as a smaller, less expensive option. The Echo Show 5 […]
Report: Amazon is developing Alexa-enabled wireless earbuds
Amazon’s first attempt to launch a smartphone wasn’t exactly a huge success, but the company took an early lead in the voice assistant space with its surprisingly popular Alexa-enabled line of devices including smart speakers, smart displays, and third-party devices including headphones and speakers. Now Bloomberg reports Amazon is hoping to launch a new Alexa […]
Lilbits 349: The 5G smartphones are coming
Mobile World Congress is a little more than a week away, and we’ll likely see new phones from companies including Samsung, Huawei, HMD (Nokia), and others, as well as other devices (Microsoft, for example, is expected to introduce its next-gen HoloLens mixed reality headset). It’s likely that we’ll also hear a lot about 5G. Next-gen […]
Lilbits 346: You can’t always judge a laptop by its specs
When I picked up my latest laptop I opted for a model with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor after realizing that I’d have to spend several hundred dollars more to get a version with a Core i7-8550U chip… and most benchmarks I’ve seen suggest that the Core i7 chip is only a little faster. But depending […]
Project Alias hacks your smart speaker so it’s only listening when you want
There’s something kind of magical about saying “Alexa” or “OK Google” to get a weather forecast, recipe, navigation directions, or to play music or control your smart home appliances. There’s also something a little creepy about it since you need to have an always-listening, internet-connected speaker in your house to do those things. Sure, Google […]
