When talking about the best smart speakers around, most people juggle between the Amazon Echo and Google Home. You would think that the competition would be a little less brutal for the smart home market, but it's starting to look like business will always be business. So much so that Amazon Echo is looking at a competition from its own parent company.
Unnoticed Release For The Amazon Tap
The Amazon Tap is yet another smart home offering from Amazon that's smaller and cheaper than their flagship smart speaker, Amazon Echo. It is a portable Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-enabled speaker with dual stereo and Dolby processing that allows it to give crisp, clear sounds with an extended bass response. It is designed to give a full 360-degree audio and smart home assistance via Amazon's Alexa.
The Amazon Tap's initial release was quite unnoticed, as it was not as capable as the other Bluetooth-enabled speakers in the market. One had to tap on a button to give Alexa voice commands, which many really saw as a bit of an inconvenience when other speakers in the market, including the Echo, allowed for hands-free voice commands.
Amazon Tap vs Amazon Echo
Amazon Tap's newest update has propelled it forward in the ranks alongside Amazon Echo because of the hands-free command capability. Just like that, the Tap is in the big leagues. Just like with the Echo, Alexa can now be accessed and given voice commands using the Tap from anywhere in the room.
Even more, since the Tap was created to be a portable speaker, that portability alone would allow its users to make anywhere they are a smart home. Unlike the Echo, which needs to be plugged in, the Tap can haul up to eight hours of battery life before it has to be recharged.
Just like the Echo, the Tap can also be installed with the Alexa Skills Kit, which is a collection of tools that can add multiple skills to Alexa.
If you have both Tap and Echo, though, the Tap is also capable of "echo spatial perception," which means that should you give a command to Alexa and you have two Alexa-connected devices in the vicinity, the closer device will be the one to accomplish the command.
With the update that Amazon brought to the Tap, they also gave it new life. Compared to the Echo, the Tap can practically do everything that the Echo can do, and its portability allows users to make a smart home out of any place they're in. What's more, the Tap is $50 dollars cheaper, so first-time smart speaker buyers can really opt to skip the Echo and go for the Tap.
