a smart speaker with Alexa

Take an Amazon Echo imitation, dress it up like a Google health home and you get the little Lenovo Smart Assistant!

The Lenovo Smart Assistant is a small $ 130 speaker with the Alexa voice assistant that was unveiled at CES 2017. Its features are about the same as those of the Echo. Don't expect big innovations, this product is not revolutionary; far from there !

So what are the features of this little smart health connected speaker? It allows you to control music, smart light bulbs, etc. You can also ask him questions about the weather, have reminders of events added to your calendar and make a list of your races. In short, everything you can do with an Echo or simply with your smartphone. Its eight microphones will pick up all your voice commands up to 5 m away. What else inside? An Intel Atom processor. Of course, you will also need a Lenovo app for iOS and Android to configure it.

Lenovo has teamed up with Harman Kardon to develop the Lenovo Smart Assistant. The Chinese brand has kicked off the real battle of smart speakers. 2017 is likely to be the year when many such speakers will hit the market. Personally, I can't wait to see who will be using Cortana from Microsoft or Harman from Samsung.

Still, let's hope that manufacturers won't just copy each other, or integrate voice assistants, as Lenovo has just done. Let us also hope that the only differentiating factor is not a slight change in the voices of the assistants or a small colored covering.

As for the Lenovo Smart Assistant, the release is scheduled for May 2017. The Harman Kardon version will be a little more expensive and still cost 180 dollars.

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