There are already several Windows PCs with Alexa built-in, but those numbers may soon increase significantly. Amazon has announced four new all-in-one and laptop PC designs with integrated Alexa for PC manufactures to use to speed up the path to launching Alexa-enabled PCs. These aren’t products that Amazon will make themselves, but they’re pre-tested white-box designs that are very close to a finished product.
Amazon calls these reference designs Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) and they’ve offered them in various speaker forms for several years. They’re meant for manufacturers to use as a starting point when designing Alexa-enabled products, but they can also give consumers an idea of what we may see in the near future from third-parties.
The Windows PC ODMs include an All-in-One PC from Wistron that features a 27″ 4K display and four microphones for hands-free Alexa functionality. Wistron is also providing a convertible notebook with a 15.6″ 4K touchscreen display, eight hours of battery life, and the same 4 microphones.
The two other manufacturers involved are Compal and Quanta which each have convertible notebooks as well. Compal’s design also has a 15.6” touch display but its lower 1080p resolution helps to achieve 13 hours of battery life. Quanta has a smaller convertible notebook with a 14″ 1080p touchscreen, 18 hours of battery life, and a fingerprint reader. Both notebooks also feature a quad-microphone array that lets you prop up the notebook and issue hands-free commands.
Leave a Reply