Best Alexa smart home devices: great gadgets to pair with your Amazon Echo

It's not all about the digital home and your entertainment systems when it comes to Alexa integration - there's also a great deal of emerging tech and games consoles that now support the voice assistant from Amazon. Read on for our pick of the best:

Motorola AXH01 wireless home phone

Price and availability TBC

This soon-to-be-available DECT phone is the world's first Alexa-enabled phone. It's simple stuff; tap and ask Alexa to call your contacts by name. “Alexa, call Mum”. You get the idea. Shouldn’t have someone thought of that before? 

iRobot Roomba 980

Reduced to $686 on Amazon (around £830 / AU$1220)

iRobot's flagship robot vacuum navigates a home and recharges when it needs to, and can be scheduled using the iRobot Home App. But why bother with that when you can bark instructions through it via Alexa or Google Assistant?

Vuzix Blade augmented reality smart glasses

Price and availability TBC

Whatever happened to Google Glass? It may have disappeared, but the concept has been given a new voice by Vuzix. On pre-order now, the Vuzix Blade may have augmented reality, but the true hands-free experience comes from Alexa, so you can talk while you walk.

Xbox One

Available for around $260 (£185 / AU$345)

No, Microsoft is not abandoning its own voice assistant Cortana, but it is letting Alexa into the world of Xbox. For Xbox Skill, voice support is being expanded so that any Alexa-enabled device can connect to an Xbox One. That means you can use an Echo to change the volume mid-game, as well as take screenshots, and launch apps.

Jamie Carter

Jamie is a freelance tech, travel and space journalist based in the UK. He’s been writing regularly for Techradar since it was launched in 2008 and also writes regularly for Forbes, The Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Sky & Telescope and the Sky At Night magazine as well as other Future titles T3, Digital Camera World, All About Space and Space.com. He also edits two of his own websites, TravGear.com and WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com that reflect his obsession with travel gear and solar eclipse travel. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners (Springer, 2015),