This is Ken.

As you might have noticed, I'm not Austin,

and that's cause he couldn't make it today,

so welcome to the first episode of

Ken Goes To Things That Austin Can't Go To.

We're her at Amazon's Day 1 HQ to take a look at some of

the new products they dropped, and they dropped a lot,

and I don't think I can cover all of it in this video,

but this will just be the things that I found most

interesting today.

Firstly, they announced a lot of improvements to Alexa.

One of the things that they're doing is making her seem

a lot more human-like.

For example, one of the focuses is contextual conversation.

You ask Alexa a question, and she answers normally,

but what you can do now is ask her follow up

questions without having to manually trigger her.

It seems a lot more natural,

unlike other assistants on other platforms.

(coughs) Siri.

Apart from that, one of the main focuses of

the show were the new slate of Echo products.

There's a lot to cover there, but some of

the ones that stood out to me were, for example,

the Echo Dot.

Up next to the original Echo Dot,

it's definitely way more chunkier, it has a felt finish,

but most importantly, it's supposed to be 70% louder

and sound way more fuller than the original Echo Dot,

and at a 50 dollar price point, which puts it up

next to the Google Home Mini, which is really cool.

I actually want to grab one of those right now. (laughs)

One of the things that people did with

the original Echo Dot was plug it into

speakers they already had.

Well, Amazon saw the opportunity,

so they made the Echo Input,

what is basically an Echo Dot,

but without the speaker or the felt, which is cool.

It's at 35 dollars, which is a decent chunk of

change compared to the Echo Dot that's going on sale.

If you want to save money and just plug it into a speaker,

well, this is a really good option.

On the higher end of that,

where the Echo Input is a lower end solution to

plugging into setup that you already have,

the Echo Link and the Echo Link Amp are meant to

plug into your hi-fi setup that you might have already.

Both of them have 24-bit DACs to work with

your existing hi-fi setup at home,

which will work great for services like Tidal,

which they just added support for.

You can just plug in the Link to

a receiver you have already,

or you can buy the amp, which is basically a kind of

receiver that can drive speakers with

dual 60 watt channels as well.

The Link will be available for $199,

and the Link Amp will be available for $299.

The former will be available sometime this year,

and the Amp will be available sometime in

2019.

They're also giving Sonos a run for its money with

its multiple and stereo room capabilities,

so you can tie multiple Echos together

and essentially play them in different rooms

or if you have two in the same room,

you can have them run in stereo.

They actually have a demo of it right there with Echo Dots,

and it sounded pretty good.

(chill trap music)

It sounded pretty good.

They also added the Echo Sub, which is at a 130 dollars,

and you can add that to any echo setup that you have.

If you have two Echo Dots that are at 50 dollars each,

and you have the Echo Sub That's at 130 dollars,

for what is essentially 230 dollars,

you have a decent 2.1 setup that will have a decent punch

and sounds great.

Among the other announcement noise,

Amazon also unveiled Echo Auto.

It's available later this year for 50 dollars

or 25 dollars for an invite only thing,

whatever that means.

It's a module that connects to

your car via Bluetooth or aux,

basically makes you car a smartcar.

Echo Auto uses your phone, your voice,

and Alexa to control things like your music,

or you can ask it directions, and it'll open up

whatever GPS or map app you use,

and you could even control your home stuff because

Alexa's in it, and it does that.

Oh, don't, don't, stop.

Let's just mute these.

We're good now.

Amazon, down this hallway,

may or may not have the future of

the kitchen

or something like that.

Right behind me is the thing that I've been looking forward

to forever.

It's the AmazonBasics Microwave that costs 60 dollars,

and if you pair it with an Echo,

you can basically have a bunch of presets on tap to

heat up a potato or popcorn or my pizza rolls,

I guess.

- A ton of microwaving is done by customers for popcorn,

so this microwave actually keep track of

how much popcorn you've cooked and then order more

so that you never run out.

You will never, never be popcornless.

The future's here.

- Welcome to 2018. (laughs)