The effect of Amazon Echo’s voice-controlled versatility on the industry has led to consumers expecting competing products to offer as smooth of an experience — if not better. Creating that better experience is a tall order with how much the Echo can learn and do, but that’s not stopping the team behind L.U.C.Y. from trying.
While L.U.C.Y. is a digital assistant in the same vein as something like Amazon’s smart canister, the first and most obvious difference lies in its design: L.U.C.Y. boasts a large 17″ to 24″, tablet-like form factor with a Full HD, IPS-equipped display that sports a 1920 x 1080 resolution, an HD camera, a microphone, and facial recognition for different users.
This makes it better suited to a living room wall than a kitchen counter, especially because it can rotate pieces of art or a user’s own smartphone photo collection when not actively in use. No matter where it is, though, it operates through voice so users can ask it to things like set reminders, order food, reserve movie tickets or seating at a restaurant, send messages to contacts, and display recipe tutorials or fitness videos, for instance.
It can also control smart home devices with its Zigbee integration and if L.U.C.Y. doesn’t know how to do something, IFTTT integration makes it so that she can. And with the team’s promises of free updates forever, more capability is inevitably down the pipeline. L.U.C.Y. comes in four sizes and in four colors (black, white, silver and wood) and starts at $325. It is slated to ship in February 2017 should its Kickstarter raise about $112,000 by October 7th, 2016.
Compared to other similarly intentioned tablet-form products like the DoodleVU, SmartMirror and Sentri, L.U.C.Y. offers a true touchscreen experience alongside voice control and a large assortment of apps for maximum personalization and smart home integration — raising the bar for the segment quite a bit in the process.