It's not clear if the eight-month-long period of invitation orders built up the level of buzz that Amazon hoped for, but those interested in the company's personal assistant-equipped Bluetooth speaker can now at least place a regular order for one. Amazon is ready to sell it to any willing to pay the $180 price tag (in the U.S., at least), with orders expected to ship by July 14th.
While the speaker itself is a moderately high-end one, the real selling point of the device is Amazon's answer to Siri: its always-listening Alexa voice assistant. With it, you can use voice commands to set timers and reminders, check the weather or sports scores, get answers to questions from Wikipedia and other sources, and play music from a variety of sources (not just Amazon's own services).
For those with Philips Hue or Belkin's WeMo devices, Echo can also serve as a smart home controller of sorts, letting you adjust the lighting or control a fan or heater. And, of course, it will let you buy things from Amazon.
As Amazon notes, those features have expanded a fair bit during the invitation-only sales period, and it expects them to expand even further in the months ahead. A free SDK has itself been available to developers on a limited basis during the Echo's initial rollout, which Amazon says will result in new capabilities starting to roll out later this year.
