Although Amazon has been making quite a few hardwares, including the immensely popular Kindle e-readers, it still feels a bit strange to see Amazon branded devices. Maybe it’s like seeing your local convenience store branded potato chips? You know that it should be theoretically as good as other generic brands, but you’re just more comfortable buying things from them than to entrust them with the production process as well.

That being said, Amazon’s newest device seems pretty much like another Bluetooth enabled speaker. The Amazon Echo can connect to your laptop, tablet, or smartphone to stream music, or you can access music through streaming services like Amazon Music, Prime Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.

However, Echo’s pièce de résistance is Alexa, the cloud-based voice service that allows the Echo to be controlled via your voice. It can play nice with smart home devices such as the Philips Hue or Belkin WeMo, telling Alexa to turn on the lights or to lower the lights, etc. It will do more, acting like a much needed personal assistant, from answering your trivial questions to setting up reminders and much more. You can just grab its attention by calling out ‘ Alexa,’ and it will listen to you every demanding commands, and from the looks of it seems to be able to carry on a more natural conversation than other voice services.

To call this merely another Bluetooth speaker may not be doing this device justice at all; let’s think of it more like the recently retired JARVIS form the Marvel universe. Or maybe that’s giving it too much credit?