Lenovo’s smart speaker uses Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant and is responsive to voice commands from up to 16 feet away, says the company. Lenovo says it teamed up with Amazon to integrate Alexa Voice Services into the Lenovo Smart Assistant, enabling the smart speaker to perform a number of tasks issued by voice command.
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Despite being smart speakers, it seems that both Amazon and Google focused more on the part of the smart assistant, as the devices have not been regarded as great speakers.
The starting price of $129.99 undercuts the Amazon Echo by $50 and is 99 cents more than the Google Home.
Looks-wise, it’s like a fancier Echo, with a fabric speaker grill below a solid upper half, plus a raised control surface on the top ringed by chrome. Check out these mobile Bluetooth options.
“Packing 360-degree microphones, the new speaker is created to pick up users’ voice commands from up to 5 meters away”, notes The U.K. Mirror.
The Smart Assistant arrives with an Intel Celeron N3060 processor with a 5-watt tweeter and one 10-watt woofer for audio playback.
Similar to the Echo, which first launched in the United States in 2014, the Smart Assistant responds to voice commands. But to one-up the competition, Lenovo is also adding enhanced audio experience with Harman Kardon.
Unfortunately, Alexa isn’t being directly built in to any of these appliances, so you’re going to need another Alexa-enabled device nearby if you want to use these features. Lenovo Smart Assistant will be available in available in Light Gray, Green and Orange colour varaints.
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Lenovo made the announcement ahead of the opening of the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show, which features a dizzying array of tech gadgets and concepts. It comes along with a complementary facial recognition app which can organize your photo library based on faces with high accuracy. New Belkin WeMo smart plugs and dimmer switches will also work with Alexa when they’re available later this month.
