Amazon launches new portable assistant, Echo Dot

On Thursday, Amazon unveiled the Echo Dot mini-speaker system, a smaller version of the company's Echo product, which has the ability to set alarms, call taxis or announce the weather forecast through the Alexa voice assistant software. Retailing at $89.99, half the price of the original, the Echo Dot offers the same Alexa system integrated in the Echo or in Amazon's Fire TV.

The Echo Dot does have a tiny speaker in it for use as an alarm clock or timer, but really, the value here is not that this thing will be a speaker that you blast music from. Amazon, at a press event in San Francisco yesterday, even had the Dot attached to a $2500 Bang & Olufsen speaker to underscore how much this little thing is not meant to be a stereo speaker. And even if you do buy several Dot speakers, you can't network them, so this isn't Amazon's attempt to replicate a Sonos-like experience (at least, not yet).



The main idea is that the Echo Dot that it will bring Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, to many other devices throughout the home. Amazon is, basically, trying to make Alexa available everywhere through differentiated pieces of hardware: it sees the Echo as a kind of central nervous system, while the Dot is something you would tether to your "real" speakers, or put in another room. The new portable Amazon Tap, also announced today, is something you would carry with you. And then, of course, Alexa is also a part of Amazon's Fire TV system.

The Echo Dot goes on sale today for $89.99. That's not cheap, but it's a big drop from the $179.99 price on the full Echo. There's also an oddity about how you can order it: you can't buy the Echo on Amazon.com. You have to order it through Alexa. That means unless you already have an Echo or a Fire TV, you can't buy one. Not yet, at least.

Photos and video by Tyler Pina.

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