28818 Smart Home Weekly: Bring Alexa On The Road With the Roav VIVA

Smart Home Weekly: Bring Alexa On The Road With the Roav VIVA



Roav, a division of the popular smartphone accessory maker Anker, has made a rather interesting car charger. It’s the Roav VIVA. Now you might be wondering how the Roav VIVA fits in with smart homes? Well, that’s because it has Alexa built-in. So it’s like having an Alexa speaker in your car to talk to, ask it to play music, ask it to unlock your home and so much more. This new car charger was announced at CES last month in Las Vegas, and received a ton of attention because it is a rather unique product from the company. And it is now available, priced at about $50. Sure that’s expensive for a car charger, but remember it does have Alexa included, so it’s more than a traditional car charger.

On the charging side of things, the Roav VIVA has two USB-A ports. These are located on the side of the charger, which allow you to plug in your smartphone and keep the wires out of the way, for the most part. These ports both use Anker’s PowerIQ technology, which is an intelligent charging technology that will charge your smartphone (or whatever device is plugged in) as quickly as it can, safely. This means that there is no Quick Charge functionality built-in, but you will get fast charging, which is pretty nice to have. And since there are two ports here, the driver and passenger can both charge their smartphones while in the car.

Smart Home Weekly: Bring Alexa On The Road With the Roav VIVA

On the top of the Roav VIVA here, you’ll see the Alexa interface. Really it’s just a mute button with a ring around the car charger that lights up blue when you are speaking to Alexa. So if you don’t want Alexa to be listening for you to say the trigger word, you are able to mute it. Now this isn’t new, it’s something that just about every Alexa device has already, but it’s good to have it in the car as well. Now you can also choose to tap the Roav VIVA to talk to Alexa, but it’s a better idea to just say “Alexa” and then give her a command.

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Having Alexa in the car is a pretty cool feature, for a number of reasons. First of all, it allows you to get navigation somewhere, change the music, or even catch up on the news, without looking at your smartphone and keeping your eyes on the road. Obviously, that’s the most important thing here, keeping your eyes on the road. With Alexa, you can also ask her to open the garage door as you’re driving down the street, or turn on the lights when you get home. Of course, you can also ask Alexa to what’s on your calendar for the day and prepare yourself for the day ahead while you’re on your way to work in the morning. There are all kinds of use-cases for Alexa, and it’s great to have it in the car, especially when it is doubling as a car charger. That way you are able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. You can pick up the Roav VIVA from the link down below.

Buy the Roav VIVA

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