Yandex has announced its new smart speaker with Alice — Yandex Station Midi. The compact device has powerful surround sound, new Alice features, and a neural processor that speeds up responses to voice commands. For devices using Zigbee, voice commands even work offline.
Thanks to its neural processor, Yandex Station Midi processes voice requests faster and more accurately. Alice now responds better to commands and recognizes people by their voice. She also learned how to manage Zigbee devices even offline. For example, if your internet connection goes out, you can still ask Alice to turn off the lights or make the light brighter. The powerful processor allows the speaker to process voice commands locally without sending them to the cloud, and the built-in Zigbee module lets you interact with Zigbee devices directly.
Alice can manage your smart home in Yandex Station Midi just by hearing your voice and launching the applicable scenarios. For example, you can set Alice to turn on the kettle and music as soon as she hears you talking in the morning. This is made possible by the new Voice Activity Detector (VAD). You can enable and set different smart home scenarios in the Home with Alice app.
Despite its size, the new speaker produces clean and powerful sound. It has three speakers with a total power of 24 watts, making it perfect for the bedroom or living room. Yandex Station Midi also boasts a specially developed low-frequency speaker to handle deep bass. It's supported by two high-frequency speakers, with Room Correction technology adapting sound to the acoustics of the room.
Yandex Station Midi has a display, LED backlight, and a compact body reminiscent of Yandex Station 2. The display shows the time and weather with a warm or cold glow of the circular LED backlight to match. The LED also shows Alice's emotions and reactions so that users can see from any part of the room that Alice has heard their request or query.
Yandex Station Midi will be released in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan on November 16. Users in Russia and Belarus can choose between two colors, black or emerald, while in Kazakhstan the speaker is exclusively available in black. Gray will be available later. You can learn more about the device by watching the Yandex YaC 2023 mini-series about people and technologies, which will be released the same day Yandex Station Midi goes on sale.
Follow the link to see more images of Yandex Station Midi.
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