'Show Mode' turns your Lenovo laptop into an Amazon Echo Show

Amazon and Lenovo have a pretty good idea of what to do with your laptop’s massive screen when you are not using it.

At CES 2021 they introduced Amazon Alexa Show Mode for the new Lenovo IdeaPad 5G.

It basically turns your laptop into a massive Echo Show, putting Alexa front and centre.

The feature uses the far-field microphones on the laptop and supports all the main features of the Echo Show, including control of your smart home, making voice and video calls and more.

Show Mode demo

“With this new feature, Show Mode transforms your Lenovo PC into a hands-free, full-screen Alexa experience,” notes Lenovo in their statement. “It turns your PC into an Echo Show-like display so that the whole family can now see and enjoy talking to Alexa. As powerful as a mouse click or keystroke, Alexa for PC lets you get more done with your PC with just your voice.”

The feature will be available on most new Lenovo laptops with far-field microphones including the Lenovo  Yoga Slim 9i, Yoga 9i, Yoga 7i, Yoga AIO 7, and the Ideapad 5 series of devices. There are hints it may come to other OEMs in the future also. Regular readers may recall Microsoft worked on a similar aborted feature using Cortana, which was eventually abandoned.

Availability

The feature is only rolling out in Q2 2021 in US English, and coming later to Europe, Asia and Oceania.

via Voicebot.Ai