It’s been over a year since Amazon opened up its Alexa Voice Service to developers, allowing anyone to make their own hardware device with Alexa support. But so far, only a few devices have come out to take advantage of it.
The JAM Voice is a budget, $70 Amazon Echo
While earlier products have added Alexa to speakers on a fridge or a smart home hub, the JAM Voice follows in the Echo’s footsteps as a small, standalone speaker. But along with music playback, the JAM Voice includes the full suite of Alexa features, including answering questions, voice commands, and any of the other third-party “Skills” that developers have built for Amazon’s platform.
However, like most third-party Alexa devices (and Amazon’s own Tap speaker), the JAM Voice lacks the Echo’s always-listening functionality for activating Alexa. The JAM Voice makes up for that disadvantage when it comes to price, however. It’ll cost $69.99 when it becomes available in Best Buy stores on October 30th (significantly cheaper than the Amazon Echo’s price of $179.99).
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
Most Popular
Most Popular
- The US is charging an American citizen for wiping his phone at the border
- Marvel announces Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider, a new Black Panther, and more
- Apple is banking on privacy to set its smart glasses apart
- Forget expensive sleepbuds. Buy this pillow instead
- After backlash, Meta pauses plan to ‘rate limit’ its smart glasses
