Amazon Echo
It's from 2014, when you were 8.
- Maker
- Amazon
- Type
- Smart speaker (Alexa)
- Debuted
- 2014
- Note
- Wake word 'Alexa' complicated life for real Alexas
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About
As of 2026, it's 12 years old.
The Amazon Echo arrived in 2014, a black cylinder that you talked to and which — shockingly for the era — occasionally understood you. It introduced Alexa, a voice assistant who could play music, set timers, and order more paper towels than any household actually needed.
It kicked off the smart-speaker boom and the modern ritual of shouting a command across the room three times while the kitchen ignores you. It also created genuine hardship for everyone actually named Alexa.
Always listening (in a way we've collectively decided not to think about), the Echo turned the home assistant from sci-fi into the most-yelled-at object in the house.
