Alexa

These days, smart displays are becoming more popular than actual smart speakers. This is because you can do a lot more with a smart display than a smart speaker. Primarily because it has a display, giving Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant a nice visual aspect. For example, you can ask for the weather and actually see the weather, instead of just hearing about it.Currently, smart displays are mostly a first-party thing. While Lenovo and JBL have both made smart displays in the past for Google Assistant, the majority are…

Simply the best: August Wi-Fi, (4th Generation) Staff pick This lock offers total control. Tell Alexa to lock, unlock, or check the status of your front door. You can also use the free August app to assign keyless entries and track who comes and goes. The latest fourth-generation lock also includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built right in, so you no longer need a separate hub. Currently, it sits at the top of our best smart locks for Alexa list. Our best smart lock for Alexa is also one of the best smart home gift…

I’m down here in Florida (it’s really hot) helping my Dad out. He had a stroke a few months back and just got sprung from his rehab place. He’s back home now and happy to be here, but he needs help and has very little mobility on his right side.The fear of him falling when nobody’s around is very real, so he needs an easy way to ask for help in case of emergency. I naturally immediately Googled “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” to remind myself of the name of the company that ran such commercials for most of my childhood…

Screenshot: Lucas Ropek/YouTubeIn 1993, telecom giant AT&T launched an advertising campaign that somehow predicted quite a lot of aspects of how we work and live today. The “You Will” ad series, directed by now-famed thrill-master David Fincher, was an eerily accurate look at what life in the mid to late 2000s would look like. The ads, narrated by former Magnum P.I. star and professional mustache-haver Tom Selleck, imagined a series of scenarios involving gadgets and technology that didn’t yet exist. “Have you ever…

While you may buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, most people don’t do their weekly grocery shopping with the retail giant (unless Whole Foods is your local store). Amazon is therefore missing a big chunk of your shopping habits, and now, it's offering an incentive for you to hand over that data: grocery coupons. Alexa Shopping List Savings, which launched this month, is a new feature for the digital assistant that lets you clip coupons in the Alexa app for items you’ve added to your shopping list. The savings are added up,…

Smart home company Ecobee appears ready to release two new smart thermostats — the Ecobee Enhanced and the Ecobee Premium — ZatzNotFunny reports. The Enhanced model has appeared in a post on Reddit, while the Premium has leaked via a retail listing from Canadian Tire. Between them, they look set to overhaul Ecobee’s existing lineup of thermostats consisting of 2016’s Ecobee3 Lite and 2019’s Ecobee SmartThermostat with voice control. The Ecobee Premium appears set to replace the flagship $250 SmartThermostat. It still…

Amazon Alexa has been in India for over four years now. The voice assistant, which initially debuted on Amazon Echo speakers, is currently available across a range of third-party devices including smart TVs, smartphones, and wearables such as smartwatches, as well as truly wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds and headphones. And of course, there are Amazon's own Echo devices. Although Alexa kicked off its journey in India only in English, it has gradually started understanding Hindi and Hinglish — a blend of Hindi and English —…

Every morning for the last four months, an alert has popped up on my phone between 4AM and 6AM, saying, “First activity of the day detected for Michael at 4:39 AM.” Thankfully, I don’t see it at that time. But later, when I’m actually awake and scrolling through my notifications, it’s a quick mental check telling me that my dad, who lives 300 miles away in Florida, is up and moving around. In January, we started a trial of Alexa Together, a new $19.99 a month service from Amazon that uses its digital assistant to…

The smartwatch landscape is largely divided into three camps: Apple Watch, the ever-evolving lineup of Google Wear OS smartwatches, and … everything else. Now, it’s probably unfair to group all the other wearables into an “everything else” bucket because, to behonest, many of the smartwatches and fitness bands in this miscellaneous category are actually great. No, what I’m talking about when I say “everything else” is that these watches employ a custom-built operating system — separate from Apple’s Watch OS and…

Redmi Smart TV X range and Mi QLED 55-inch TV models are now receiving a new update in India. It brings an updated security patch and a new “Works with Alexa” app. The Redmi X Smart TV range —50-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch sizes — are receiving this new update. All Indian users are recommended to check for the system update and install it on their compatible device. To recall, the Redmi Smart TV X series was unveiled in India in March this year, whereas the Mi QLED 55-inch was unveiled in December last year.Xiaomi India…