Amazon’s New Alexa Powered Microwave is a Life Changer for a lot of People

At their hardware event in September, Amazon wowed its users with a lot of new devices, new Echo speakers, a new Show, Alexa support in your car, and much more.

One product that received less love was a microwave, which is a AmazonBasics branded microwave that will support Alexa.
Many people were quick to criticise the product saying, they would still have to put food in, talk to Alexa and wait for the food and then take it out. Some tech bloggers went as far to say:

A voice-activated microwave is a terrible idea and a pointless frivolity, a device which solves a problem almost no one had. Why trust your lying eyes?

This is a fare point, but there are several aspects they haven’t considered, firstly quick-cook voice presets, where you can simply say “Alexa bake a potato, isn’t that a lot easier than finding the right preset button, or in some cases Googling how long should I bake a potato? Furthermore you can leave food in, and cook it at the time you want, yes this will also question the hygiene of keeping food at room temperature, but this article isn’t to justify why the microwave is great for your average consumer, although, I would love to read your reasons behind getting one, so do share the advantages of this in the comments below!

For me and for many other visually impaired users, buying home appliances is a bit of a challenge, you buy a product, then find out that it isn’t accessible, even more so with newer products, I’m looking at you touch screens!
The next best thing is to simply look for devices with physical buttons, but even then those buttons are not accessible to us right away, we would need to either memorise what each one does, or label them ourselves, which makes the microwave look like it suffered an accident with plastic covering its buttons.
Yes, a talking microwave is an option but it costs a staggering £270, a shocking difference to the $59.99 price on the Amazon Microwave.

Very little is known about the microwave other than it has no microphones or speakers, and it connects to your existing Echos via Bluetooth.

You simply press the Alexa button which will wake one of your Echos nearby and you can give commands such as 2 minutes on high, make popcorn, stop, etc.

As someone who has trust issues with his eyes, this product will be a great addition to my smart home setup.

If you are reading this and you are based in the US you can preorder the AmazonBasics Microwave now, it will ship on the 14th of November.

Unfortunately if you’re on this side of the pond, it is not available in the UK yet to preorder, but if it ever becomes ready, it will most likely cost £60, make sure you follow our social media as once it’s out we will share it with you.

What do you think about the latest microwave from Amazon?
Would you get one or do you feel it’s just too gimmicky?
Let us know below!

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