CES: Acer to Bring Amazon Alexa to PCs

At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Acer announced that Amazon Alexa will be coming to select Aspire, Spin, Switch and Swift notebooks, as well as Aspire all-in-one PCs. Amazon Alexa will initially be available in the US via an update through Acer Care Center, while wider support is expected to be rolled out mid-2018.

"Acer is excited to be among the first brands to bring Alexa to PCs," said Jerry Kao, President of IT Products Business of Acer. "With industry-leading audio technology across our portfolio, we’re providing consumers the possibility to interact with multiple voice services on their notebook or desktop. Alexa lets users do thousands of things and we’re now bringing those capabilities natively to PCs.

Enabled by Intel® Smart Sound Technology, an integrated audio DSP (Digital Signal Processor) built to handle audio, voice, and speech interactions, many of Acer’s latest notebooks and desktops will support Amazon Alexa and respond to voice commands quickly while offering high fidelity audio without impacting system performance.

Notebooks such as the Switch 7 Black Edition and Spin 5 with Acer Purified.Voice and four digital microphones support far-field voice recognition from up to nine feet (2.74 m) away, while others with dual microphones will be able to activate Alexa within three feet (0.91 m). All supported convertible and 2-in-1 notebooks come with front-facing speakers and provide an immersive audio experience.

In addition to the Acer Air Monitor, which already works with Alexa, Acer’s new V6820M and V6820i 4K UHD projectors will be among the first of its kind to support Amazon Alexa. Now part of the smart home, consumers will be able to control the projector after enabling the Acer Projector Smart Home skill.