Amazon Alexa, the voice-based smart assistant from tech major Amazon, is finally rolling out to Indian queries. Though Amazon has announced the service, Indians will need to wait told October 30 to get hold of the Alexa app or Amazon Echo devices that lets you have a chat with the voice bot, asking her for anything from the latest music to the weather and jokes. While there will be three different Echo devices coming to India, initially for those who have requested an invite, there will be a special festival discount of 30 per cent on all these smart speakers. Here is a look at the three Amazon Echo devices. Amazon Echo: Price in India is Rs 9,999 This is the mid-range Echo; a hands-free, voice-controlled speaker with far-field voice control. This means you can basically have a chat with Alexa from anywhere in the room using this one. It wakes up when you say “Alexa” and can then on take on any query. Within some time it will learn your preference and start adding context on its own, that’s because Alexa actually resides in the cloud. So every query is read by the Echo, sent to the Amazon servers using Wi-Fi and broadband, matched with the database using machine learning and answers are sent back to the Echo. Amazon Echo has an array of seven microphones that use beam-forming technology and noise cancellation to hear across the room - this happens even when there is loud ambient noise in the room. Amazon Echo offer crisp vocals with dynamic bass response thanks to a 2.5-inch down-firing woofer, dedicated tweeter, Dolby processing, and 360° omni-directional audio. In India, Echo can stream music directly from Amazon Prime Music, Saavn, TuneIn, and more. Being Bluetooth-enabled, it can also stream music from your other devices. Amazon Echo Plus: Price in India is Rs 14,999 Echo Plus has all the features of the Echo along with a built-in smart home hub. So the Echo Plus can connect to compatible smart home devices like a Philips Hue bulb or Nest Thermostat. All users have to say is “Alexa, discover my devices” for the Echo Plus to automatically discover and set up ZigBee-supported products. Amazon Echo Dot: Price in India is Rs 4,499 The most affordable Echo is good for voice assistance, but has limited speaker capabilities because of its small size. You can set up the small Echo Dot to talk with Alexa and listen to music - the best way to do this is to connect the Dot to another good speaker system using a 3.5mm stereo cable.
