Amazon announces cheaper and better $49.99 Echo Dot, will issue $10 Alexa Shopping credits to first-gen owners who order

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Amazon has sent out an email to first-gen Echo Dot owners offering $10 worth of Alexa Shopping credit, but only if they purchase using Alexa Shopping. And no, you can't use the $10 toward the Echo Dot purchase itself:

Amazon's Echo has been a surprising hit product for smart home integration and its Alexa feature-rich Assistant has definitely grown since its introduction to become more capable and more interesting. Today, along with the announcement that the Echo is coming to the UK and Germany and is now available in white, Amazon has unveiled a new Echo Dot, the tiny puck version of the Echo.The first generation Echo Dot was introduced in March this year, but you could only order it through Alexa, i.e. you had to have another Echo or a Fire TV device (unless you used this workaround). It also cost $89.99. This new Echo Dot can be ordered without any Alexa intervention, directly from Amazon's website through the source link at the bottom of the post. And it only costs $49.99, so it's 45% cheaper than the first one. Better yet, it has improved voice recognition and will detect through Echo Spatial Perception which Dot is closer to you and respond from it in case you have several around the house.And Amazon is actually banking on you buying many of these for your different rooms. By using codes DOT6PACK and DOT12PACK, you can get a free Dot with a purchase of 5, or two Dots with the purchase of 10. Get enough of these Dots and you can make a line, a circle, or any geometric shape you like.

Keep in mind that the Echo Dot can be used as a standalone device thanks to its microphones and speaker, but to get better music and audio, you might want to connect it to a bigger speaker through Bluetooth or a 3.5mm aux cable. It's still, however, the cheapest way to get into Alexa for personal assistance and home automation and see what it can do.

The Echo Dot will be released on October 20 and you can grab it in black or white for $49.99 from the link below. It'll also be available in the UK for GBP 49.99 and Germany for EUR 59.99.

UPDATE: 2016/09/14 10:48am PDT BY

Amazon has sent out an email to first-gen Echo Dot owners offering $10 worth of Alexa Shopping credit, but only if they purchase using Alexa Shopping. And no, you can't use the $10 toward the Echo Dot purchase itself:

Something just for you

As a customer who purchased the previous–generation Echo Dot, you can get a $10 Alexa Shopping credit when you order the All-New Echo Dot using Alexa Shopping. Order today through October 20 and a $10 Alexa Shopping credit will be applied to your account within one week after your new Echo Dot has shipped.

UPDATE: 2016/10/13 4:51am PDT BY

If you have an existing Echo or Echo Dot, an update has rolled out now to bring Echo Spatial Perception to them as well, so that all of your devices, new and old, can now work together to figure out which one is closer to you and respond from it.

Source: Echo Dot (2nd gen) on Amazon

PRESS RELEASE

Introducing the All-New Echo Dot—Add Alexa to Any Room for Less than $50

The new Echo Dot is hands-free, voice-controlled, and powered by Alexa—play music, turn on the lights, get information and the news, set alarms, and more

Connect Echo Dot to external speakers to enable voice control of your home entertainment system, or use it on its own to talk to Alexa

ESP (Echo Spatial Perception) makes it easy to have multiple Echo and Echo Dot devices throughout your home, ensuring that Alexa responds intelligently from the device closest to you

Echo Dot is just $49.99—also available as a six-pack (buy five, get one free) or a 12-pack (buy 10, get two free)

September 14, 2016 08:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today introduced an all-new version of the groundbreaking Echo Dot for under $50, so you can add Alexa to any room in your home. Just like Echo, Echo Dot gives you access to all of Alexa’s capabilities—she can answer questions, play music, turn on the lights, set timers, give sports updates, check the weather, access over 3,000 Alexa skills, and much more. The all-new Echo Dot is available for pre-order at www.amazon.com/echodot and will begin shipping next month. “With the same high-quality array of seven microphones found in Echo, the all-new Echo Dot can hear you from across the room, even when it’s noisy or music is playing,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “And, at under $50, it is easier than ever to add Echo and Alexa to any or every room in your home.” All-New Echo Dot—Just $49.99 Made for Any Room—All-New Hardware Design Echo Dot has a new sleek and compact design, comes in either black or white, and is designed to disappear into any room in a house. With its built-in speaker, you can place Dot in the bedroom and use it as a smart alarm clock that can also turn off your lights. Or use Dot in the kitchen to easily set timers, ask for measurement conversions and recipes, and shop for tens of millions of Amazon products using just your voice. With the same array of seven microphones found in Amazon Echo, Dot uses beam-forming technology and enhanced noise cancellation to detect the wake word, Alexa, from across the room. The new Echo Dot features a more powerful speech processor, which delivers improved far-field speech recognition accuracy. Connect to Any Speaker to Voice Control your Music Echo Dot can directly connect to speakers through Bluetooth or using a 3.5mm stereo cable, enabling you to add Alexa to your home entertainment system. Then, use just your voice to control Amazon Music, Prime Music, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and more. Customers interested in purchasing a new Bluetooth speaker can take advantage of a special price when they purchase a bundle of select Bose speakers with an Echo Dot. Turn on the Lights, Change the Temperature, and Start the Sprinkler with Just Your Voice Use Echo Dot to turn on the lamp before getting out of bed, change the temperature without leaving your chair, or dim the lights from the couch to watch a movie—all with just your voice. Echo Dot works with smart home devices such as lights, switches, fans, thermostats, garages, sprinklers, and more from leading smart home providers including Philips Hue, ecobee, TP-Link, Insteon, WeMo, Lutron, TrackR, Luma, Nest, Wink, Honeywell, Samsung SmartThings and Garageio. Customers interested in creating a smart home can save up to $50 on bundles with Echo Dot and smart home devices from ecobee, Philips, and TP-Link. ESP (Echo Spatial Perception)—Put an Echo or Echo Dot in Every Room For customers who have multiple Echo devices within hearing distance, Amazon’s new ESP technology intelligently calculates the clarity of the customer’s voice and determines which Echo is best to respond to the request—instantly. This feature is smart—performance gets better over time, so ESP will continuously improve as you use Echo. In multi-Echo households, ESP resolves the problem of two Echo devices answering you at the same time. This new feature will be available as a free update for all Echo devices—including Amazon Echo and the first generation Echo Dot—starting in the coming weeks. Alexa is Always Getting Smarter Alexa—the brain behind Echo Dot—is built in the cloud, so she is always getting smarter. Alexa can play music, and provide information, sports scores, weather, and more—instantly. The more you use Dot, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences. Thousands of third party developers are also building skills for Alexa—there are already over 3,000 skills available that let you do even more with Alexa. You can order a pizza through Dominos, request a ride from Uber, read Audiobooks with Audible, find flight information with Kayak, get cocktail recipe suggestions from Patrón, and much more. Pricing and Availability The all-new Echo Dot is available in either black or white and will start shipping next month. You can pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/echodot. A single Echo Dot is available for $49.99. Otherwise, you can choose a six-pack for buy five, get one free, or a 12-pack for buy 10, get two free and easily Alexa-enable every room of your house.