Amazon releases its first portable smart speaker in years, but you can't have it in the US yet
The Amazon Tap was tall, cylindrical, and not very popular
We're talking about 2016's Amazon Tap, which looked nothing like this hot new Echo Input Portable variant, failing to gain much of a following before being quietly discontinued last year. The e-commerce giant turned global leader of a booming hardware market seems to have learned a thing or two from the Tap's tepid consumer reception, improving its mediocre battery life (at least on paper) and eliminating the awkward process of summoning Alexa while on the move.
Instead of "tapping" a button, Echo Input Portable owners will be able to activate the voice assistant... by voice right off the bat. Interestingly, the portable new speaker is billed as an "Echo for your home" that you can easily carry from "room to room." That's not to say it's very heavy, weighing in at 448 grams, but for some reason, Amazon doesn't envision this as an outdoor-friendly product.
The Echo Input Portable comes with a modern fabric design and hands-free Alexa integration
Perhaps the audio power is not particularly impressive, as the company only mentions "360 degree sound", not even going to the trouble of vaguely promoting a "crisp sound" experience or anything. All in all, this feels largely like an experiment meant to gauge interest in portable and compact smart speakers, which is why it's not that shocking to see the Echo Input Portable Smart Speaker Edition exclusively released in one (big) market... for now.
Priced at the affordable equivalent of around $85, the fairly intriguing device is scheduled to start shipping on December 18 in India, currently fetching just 70 bucks or so (Rs. 4,999) when taking a pre-order discount into consideration. How about it, folks, would you like to see this thing rapidly expanded to the US and other countries? Is the concept of a portable smart speaker interesting to you or should Amazon stick to its "traditional" Echo designs?
