Amazon is soon to be coming out with a new device called Echo, which is essentially Siri but for your home.

Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It’s always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it detects the wake word. You can pick any name as your wake word (I just want to name it TARS or Baymax now). Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound.

Tucked under Echo’s light ring is an array of seven microphones. These sensors use beam-forming technology to hear you from any direction. With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it’s playing music. Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where we leverage the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request. Learn more about Echo’s voice recognition.

You can use Echo for a ton of things, just by asking including:

• News, weather, and information: Hear up-to-the-minute weather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn.
• Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.
• Alarms, timers, and lists: Stay on time and organized with voice-controlled alarms, timers, shopping, and to-do lists.
• Questions and answers: Get information from Wikipedia, definitions, answers to common questions, and more.
• More coming soon: Echo automatically updates through the cloud with new services and features.

A pretty neat piece of tech by Amazon, which will be priced at $199 although those with Amazon Prime will be able to get it for $99.

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