This week CES 2017 kicked off and one of the first interesting announcement is from Lenovo with an Amazon partnership. Lenovo have announced the Lenovo Smart Assistant a standalone speaker with Amazon Alexa.

Essentially it’s an Amazon Echo built by Lenovo so Lenovo get into the smart home market using Amazon’s platform. There is also an optional Harman Kardon version which has premium audio speakers competing with devices like Sonos. The Harman Kardon partnership is interesting as Microsoft teased a Cortana powered Harman Kardon speaker what will be available later this year.

Having played around with Alexa I can see that Amazon’s assistant is going to be a key interface into the smart home and I wonder how many other devices will ship with Alexa? The Lenovo Smart Assistant starts at $129.99 beginning in May 2017. Lenovo Smart Assistant Harman Kardon Edition starts at $179.99, available beginning in May 2017.

Making Smart Technologies Accessible
Bringing great smart home experience to more households and making the technologies more accessible is one of our big goals in the connected world. After conducting a series of studies on consumers’ pain points and needs, Lenovo designed the Lenovo Smart Assistant, a new mainstream digital personal assistant, with Amazon Alexa cloud-based voice services. Built in collaboration with Amazon, the elegantly designed Lenovo Smart Assistant recognizes users’ voice commands to conduct web searches, play music, create lists, calendar reminders and much more. And because Alexa’s brains are in the cloud, it means she’s always getting smarter. The Lenovo Smart Assistant is also designed to run Lenovo smart home devices, as well as scores of existing third-party products to expand user options.

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