Unlike other smart speakers like the Google Home Max or the Apple HomePod, Amazon has a wide variety of smaller and more affordable smart speakers for users who are more interested in using them for their smarts rather than music playback capabilities. This is evidenced in last year’s numbers where the Echo Dot was Amazon’s best-selling product during the holidays.
The good news is that if you have several Echo devices laying around your house, Amazon has recently introduced an update to Alexa in which users will now be able to use Alexa-powered devices as an intercom. This is according to a report from TechCrunch who confirms that the update is now rolling out to users in both the US and Canada.
In case it wasn’t already obvious about what it does, the intercom feature will basically let users command one Echo device to relay the message to all other connected devices. It won’t work like an actual intercom where it will use your voice, but rather users have to tell it what to say before passing the message along, for example by saying, “Alexa, announce that dinner is ready”.
It would have been much better if there was actual intercom-like functionality, but we suppose this will have to do for now. So if you have multiple Echo devices at home, this could be one way to take advantage of it.
Filed in . Read more about Alexa, Amazon, Echo and Speakers.