Amazon Echo Wall Clock is an old-school clock, with an Alexa twist
The online shopping giant is remaking all manner of home devices, from a microwave to, yes, the boring timepiece on your wall.
Of all the fantastical things the tech industry typically tackles, from self-driving cars to sensors in your bed, it might seem a little odd to hear Amazon has set out to remake the wall clock.
After all, most of these things are cheap and out of the way, an often ignored piece of office and school furniture. Heck, it's even a bad thing if you're a "clock watcher."
Well, Amazon wants you to rethink that. With its $29 Echo Wall Clock (yes, that's the name), Amazon has taken the modern analog timepiece with its minute hand and hour hand, and updated it with a ring of LED lights around the edge to show what timers you've set. And, of course, it changes for daylight saving time automatically.
The move is the latest effort from Amazon to push even further into the smart home industry. In the four years since Amazon first launched its original Echo, partners have packed Amazon's Alexa smart assistant into all sorts of devices from phones and computers to cars, kitchen appliances and even a toilet. Now, Apple , Google , Samsung and Microsoft are racing to build up their own voice assistants and integrate them into more devices to catch up to Amazon. To stay one step ahead, Amazon aggressively expanded its line of Echo devices, pushed Alexa into hospitality and office spaces, and integrated Alexa with over 20,000 kinds of devices.
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Along with the Echo, Amazon has seen success in its equally unflashy but low-priced Fire tablets and Fire TV video streamers. Its rare miss was the Fire Phone, which quickly failed after coming out in 2014.
As of Thursday morning, Amazon had 11 Alexa-powered gadgets: the Echo, Echo Plus , Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Spot, Echo Dot Kids Edition , Echo Look, Fire TV Cube , Amazon Tap , Echo Connect and Echo Buttons. But the company isn't done putting its Alexa smarts into other devices, including a $60 microwave and new devices that work with TVs.
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