Lenovo’s new Smart Assistant will sell for $129, and will compete with Amazon’s Echo speakers using the artificial intelligence developed by Amazon. The smart home assistant was reportedly built in collaboration with Amazon, and is able to recognize “users’ voice commands to conduct web searches, play music, create lists, calendar reminders and much more,” Lenovo said in a statement.
The Smart Assistant was announced just ahead of CES 2017, along with a vast array of exciting tech showcases. Lenovo’s product risks being overshadowed by other similar devices, such as Google’s smart home product which can respond to questions and voice commands and connect to smart appliances, enabling the user to set a thermostat or turn on an oven remotely.
Lenovo’s senior vice president for personal computers and smart devices, Johnson Jia, said, “Our goal has never been to simply build smart home devices for the sake of advancing computers and smart devices. In the same way a person’s IQ is measured by applied knowledge, we believe products are ‘smart’ to the degree they’re actually understood and applied to daily life by their users.”
Amazon is said to be “excited to work with an innovative company such as Lenovo to bring the Lenovo Smart Assistant with Alexa to customers this spring,” said Amazon’s vice president for Amazon Alexa, Steve Rabuchin. The Lenovo Smart Assistant is expected to be available for purchase in May 2017.