In mid-November 2018, Amazon started shipping their new microwave oven… which offers Alexa control! You literally can say “Alexa turn on microwave for 30 seconds” and bam… the microwave will start!
So that in essence is the entire 15 second review video. It is a smallish microwave, maybe best suited for a small (singer person?) household, and the core programming steps can be controlled by voice commands to Alexa.
Several in the Youtube vide that I posted a month ago, and on reddit.., commented that there isn’t a huge time or effort savings as you still have to open the door of the microwave and then place your food item inside… and at that point the keypad is right there and you can just push the buttons! ha!
But my argument back to them is, imagine you are cooking a big family holiday feast and you wanted to heat up frozen string beans and were looking to time it with your other dishes… well you could have the beans sitting in the microwave and as you stir your gravy on the stovetop and check on the turkey in the oven, when it comes time to cook those beans you can simply tell Alexa to start the microwave, without ever looking away from the stove!
But honestly even if you agree that the ability to voice program your microwave is a little unnecessary, ar $59 it’s not really overpriced for a microwave. Well, I honestly didn’t take the time to do comparison price shopping but $60 seems fair.
Before we get to the elaborate and detailed video, to clarify a common question.. the microwave is NOT a full Alexa/Echo device. It does not listen to your voice directly. You most have an echo device available (and setup of course) and you speak your cmmands to that other device, and it sends the power commands to the microwave.
One last note… When I first setup the microwave I don’t think I did anything to connect it to my my existing echo system. I just plugged it in and it seemed to work. I’m not entirely clear because I expected to need to do more such as wifi connection and synching, but without me even realizing it seemed to just be connected. Well, let’s just say it was very easy.
So without further ado… here is my 15 second AmazonBasics Microwave featuring Alexa!
To order your own AmazonBasics Alexa compatible Microwave click here!