Portable Alexa Speaker – Amazon details from the tech giant’s hometown, including e-commerce, AWS, Amazon Prime, Alexa, logistics, devices and more.
The portable Alexa device is no longer available for sale on Amazon’s website, and the Echo and Alexa devices section displays a bright yellow “This device is unavailable” flag. “This item is no longer available,” Best Buy, another seller of Amazon devices, said on its site. Even Amazon’s own Refurbished Devices page lists the “Verified Refurbished Amazon Faucet” as “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back.”
Portable Alexa Speaker
The only major retailer currently selling the Amazon Tap is Staples, which says on its website “This item is out of stock,” but it can be purchased online for the regular price of $130.
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When contacted, an Amazon spokesperson said, “Customer response to the Amazon Tap has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re sold,” but advises customers to consider other new devices, such as the latest Echo Dot or Echo Input. But while there’s no word on whether Amazon Tap is temporarily or permanently sold out, a banner on the Amazon Tap page suggests it’s the latter.
If the faucet is indeed ticking, this is the first time Amazon has completely overshadowed one of its smart speaker lines since updating or expanding its lineup with new models like the original Echo and Echo Dot.
When it launched in 2016, the Amazon Tap was a brand new smart speaker. Like the original Amazon Echo, it has built-in Alexa, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity and great sound for streaming music or other audio. Uniquely designed to be portable: the faucet had an internal rechargeable battery and sat on a charging base when not in use. Amazon also sold a variety of colorful rubber “straps” for carrying the faucet.
But Tap was also limited. At launch, hands-free operation was not supported: owners had to press a button with a microphone icon to give the Tap command. Later this restriction was removed and an option was added to press the firmware update button. The Tap didn’t have a light ring on top, which is a standard feature of other devices in the Echo family, but instead used a line of five small LEDs.
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In recent months, feature updates to Amazon’s Alexa devices have disabled the Tap. Tap wasn’t included when Alexa introduced announcements in April. When other Echo features like multiroom music were introduced last year, there was no mention of the Amazon Tap, and some feature settings in the Amazon Alexa app don’t show the Tap as a supported device.
Rumors that the Tap could be doomed have been swirling for more than a year since the introduction of multi-room music functionality for other Alexa devices last August. Three months ago, another speculation began to circulate on the Internet. “Amazon claims portability was the number one customer request, but this device seems to have been quietly put on the back burner,” one Redditor wrote. “I take the faucet everywhere, whether it’s on the bike or at the beach, in the garden, it works as a bluetooth speaker.”
Previous reports from market research companies that track smart speaker sales show that the Tap has far fewer installations than its original Echo or Echo Dot siblings.
Has reached out to Amazon again for further comment on Amazon’s current situation and what the discontinuation of Amazon Tap means for those who own it. That will mark the end of the line for our hands-on review as a device that “strikes a good balance… in terms of flexibility, portability and functionality.”
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