This article was 1st published on our sister Site, Digital World Native.
Getting an aftermarket digital assistant for your car has become a lot easier & a whole lot of fun with this small, full-featured Amazon Alexa-based device. The Garmin Speak Plus lets you use your voice to connect to your smart home devices while driving home so that you can adjust your thermostat or preheat the oven.
Where it really shines is in conjunction with your phone’s data connection, letting you stream Alexa responses hands-free with voice commands, like music, news, & navigation, through your car’s stereo, through Bluetooth, or an auxiliary jack. It also has a built-in dash-cam that gives you forward collision & lane departure warnings.
The dash-cam automatically records your drive & saves footage when an incident is detected. You can download a free app from Garmin that lets you share your footage. The cam’s forward collision features work by alerting you when you’re getting too close to vehicles up ahead, & lane departure warnings let you known when you’re crossing lanes, veer into oncoming traffic, or drift off the road. Additionally, “Go” alerts tell you when you’re stopped in traffic, like at an intersection, & when the traffic ahead moves again.
The Speak Plus allows you to employ voice commands to stream music from Amazon Music, SiriusXM, & Pandora, & will soon also support Spotify. Amazon Prime customers have access to 2 millon+ songs. Other voice commands let you turn on Garmin’s premium in-car turn-by-turn navigation by verbally asking it to.
You can also talk to your device to ask Alexa to check your calendar, to-do lists, weather & traffic. Your passengers won’t be bored as they can be entertained with clever interactive games, jokes, trivia… If you’re an info & data geek, you’ll be able to ask Alexa to look up answers to queries in Wikipedia, update the weather forecast or traffic, or listen to the latest news or to your favorite podcasts.
The Speak Plus is available online directly from Garmin here for US $179.99. A version of the device without the dash cam can be had for US $99.99.
Image Credit: Garmin
