LENOVO

To Enter Home Hub Market With Smart Assistant

While Amazon has already more-or-less conquered the American market with their Echo, the rest of the world is still up for grabs. What’s more, Lenovo’s global brand might just make it the right company for the job. They announced their own ‘Smart Assistant’ at CES.

Now, all they have to do is get it into the hands of consumers.

Boasting both a similar design to (as well as a lot of the same cutting-edge tech powering) Amazon’s Echo, the Lenovo Smart Assistant is a small cylindrical device that leverages eight far-field microphones to pick up voice commands with greater reliability than the rival devices.

Equally impressive is the tech working under the surface. On the inside, the Smart Assistant integrates an Intel Celeron N3060 for processing and a pair of tweeters (one 5-watt and one 10watt) for audio. Once set up, users will be able to listen to music, ask questions, search for information and control smart home gadgets using voice commands. The similarities between the two devices even extend to the software side of things with the Lenovo Smart Assistant able to be controlled and configured using the Alexa app.

On top of all this, there will even be a moreexpensive Harman Kardon version of the device available. That model will look to sweeten the deal by adding premium audio to the equation and give it a more definable edge over competitors.

The Lenovo Smart Assistant is set to arrive in retailers by May.

The device is set to go on sale in Australia for around $250.