Amazon on Thursday unveiled a slew of new devices that will further incorporate its voice-activated assistant Alexa into people's homes, including a subwoofer, a smart plug and even a microwave. The tech giant is also updating its family of Echo smart speakers, the devices that have helped the e-commerce giant establish an early lead among voice-based interfaces.
At an event at Amazon headquarters in Seattle, David Limp, Amazon's SVP of devices & services, asked reporters to "imagine a future that has thousands of devices in your home." In addition to rolling out several new and updated products, Amazon plans to accomplish that by facilitating more integrations with other product makers and providing new home services.
Amazon's device strategy essentially boils down to Alexa everywhere. Last year, Amazon outlined a bevy of new Echo form factors[1] to expand Alexa's reach. At CES 2017, Alexa was a headliner[2] and embedded into a range of devices.
ZDNet's sister site CNET has a liveblog[3] following all of the details of Amazon's announcements.
Here's a look at what's new:
The Echo Sub
The Echo Sub pairs with the Echo or Echo Plus to add bass when listening to music. It delivers down-firing, 100W deep bass sound through a 6-inch woofer. When paired with two of the same Echo devices, the Echo Sub enables left/right stereo sound. To set it up, users plug it in, open the Alexa App and wirelessly connect to the Echo devices that control music.
Amazon Echo Link Amp and Echo Link
To complement the new Echo Sub, Amazon also announced two more audio products. Called the Echo Link Amp and Echo Link, these are stereo amplifiers with multiple audio in and audio