Triby home speaker reviewed: Alexa outside Echo is promising but not complete

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

Amazon's Alexa has made its way into many homes, but now she's branching out. The voice assistant has always been an open platform, and we've seen a number of companies add support for Alexa to their services over the past year. Now, we're starting to see Alexa in products other than Amazon's Echo devices—the first one is a cute little speaker named Triby. The $199 multitasking device is a message board, radio, speaker, and an Alexa vessel all in one, and with its magnetic back, it's being billed as a perfect kitchen companion.

Triby will give us some idea of how well other companies will be able to integrate Alexa into their products. But also, and arguably more interestingly, it shows how companies are thinking about third-party hardware for Alexa and what these devices could and should be.

Design: Little refrigerator bot

Triby doesn't resemble the sleek, modern devices we're used to seeing today. It's got a square, bumper-encased body and a handle on top, and it resembles a flattened lunch box. The bumper helps protect Triby from unexpected falls, and that plus the rounded corners make it safe for kids to manhandle. The rest of its surface is covered in holes, since it's mostly a portable speaker, and it has a couple of physical buttons on its face for making calls, switching between radio stations, and playing or pausing music. Its rectangular e-ink display shows the date, time, and temperature by default. Since it's supposed to be a kitchen companion, it has two large magnets on the back so you can stick it to your refrigerator.

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