Samsung surely (hopefully) has bigger and better things up its sleeve for CES, coming off a year that was, at best, pretty damn rocky for the electronics giant. In the meantime, the company’s looking to build up a little hype ahead of the event by announcing a few things before next week’s great Vegas melee.
Its latest offering may well be the most 2017 product we’ve seen lined up for the electronics show yet – a robotic vacuum that features Amazon Echo voice compatibility.
Details are still pretty scarce at the moment, but one can likely safely assume that the Powerbot VR7000 will be in line with the Neato vacuum functionality that debuted late last month with commands like “Alexa, ask Neato to start cleaning” and “Alexa, ask Neato to pause cleaning.” The functionality also looks set to come with the rest of the company’s WiFi connected Powerbots.
The robo-vacuum is also more than a quarter smaller than its predecessor and features specialized functionality for getting close cleans up against walls, an issue with a number of other similar devices. As with other recent WiFi-enabled Roomba competitors, the new Powerbot features remote control via a connected smartphone app for when Alexa control just isn’t enough.
More info on pricing and availability may well arrive along with the vacuum next week (!) at CES.