Anker’s smart home and lifestyle brand, Eufy, has just announced its first smart speaker, in the Eufy Genie. This smart speaker will be priced at $34.99 and have Alexa built in, thus competing directly with Amazon’s Echo Dot and even undercutting it a bit. Similar to what you’d get from the Echo and Echo Dot, with the Eufy Genie, you’ll be able to use thousands of different skills, as well as control your smart home, ask Alexa for the latest news and much more. It’s essentially another option for those that want to get started with Alexa, and it’s now the cheapest option available.
Inside the Eufy Genie is a 2W speaker, now that’s not the most powerful speaker out there, but it will get the job done. And similar to the Amazon Echo Dot, you are able to connect another speaker to the Eufy Genie either via a 3.5mm cable or over Bluetooth. Using a 3.5mm cable will be ideal since Bluetooth does lag a bit. This means that you could plug it into a more high-end speaker and make it smart. Eufy Genie is going to be the core of Eufy’s upcoming smart home lineup, which Eufy says users will be able to outfit their entire home with smart appliances for under $600. Which is pretty impressive.
Anker’s CEO, Steven Yang stated in a prepared statement that “Genie is the core of the Eufy smart home system, but this is just the beginning. Eufy users should expect a complete line of smart devices in the coming weeks, including smart light wall plugs, light bulbs and even an Alexa-enabled version of our flagship product, the RoboVac 11.” Now this would put Eufy in elite company, having a robot vacuum that works with Alexa. Both Neato and iRobot both have Alexa support with their respective robot vacuums. So it’s clear that Eufy has quite a few products in its pipeline, as it prepares for the upcoming holiday season – which believe it or not, isn’t that far off. The Eufy Genie will be available from Amazon beginning August 16th and it’ll cost $34.99.
