But is the Astro worth the $1,000 Early Access price—not to mention the $1,450 price tag Amazon plans to put on it once it's generally available? Not yet. For now, this robot remains a luxury item for people with a lot of money to try out cutting-edge technology that still lacks a compelling use case. And that's not necessarily a bad thing! After all, Amazon's Day 1 Editions are experimental projects, and the development team is still working on Astra's flaws and improving its features.
"Day 1 products are all about bringing big-picture ideas to life, and Astro is exactly that," said an Amazon representative. "It's Amazon's first step into consumer robotics, but it won't be the last. It's real technology in the hands of customers, and we're already getting valuable customer feedback while optimizing core features and adding new features." ."
In its capacity as Amazon's investment in the consumer robotics space, the Astro is a fascinating device with plenty of personality and promise. But as a product you can buy and use in your home right now, it just lacks the utility or clear identity to make it worthwhile.
Who is Amazon Astro?
Amazon Astro looks a lot like the Echo Show 10 smart display on wheels. It has the same 10.1-inch screen with a 5-megapixel camera on the bezel - which lets you video chat, albeit from a slightly awkward angle - and two front-facing 55mm speakers with a passive bass radiator.
Like the Echo Shows, Astro also has Alexa on board, which can play music, stream TV shows, answer weather questions and tell bad jokes, among many other things.
Because Astro is so low to the ground, it also has a way of changing its perspective. The periscope, which protrudes from the device's rotating head near the mute and volume buttons, adds a 12-megapixel camera and another 5-megapixel camera. You can use them to take selfies and, more practically, to browse the house remotely while you're away.
Amazon Astro robot
Astro has his own distinct personality, charmingly expressed with his animated eyes and varied robot sounds.
Chris Monroe/CNET
What sets the Astro apart, of course, are the wheels. Amazon's development team has adapted navigation technology long used for robotic vacuum cleaners to help Astro efficiently map your home and then navigate smoothly and efficiently when given simple voice commands such as "go to the bedroom" or "take this drink to Andrew in the living room." ."
Another difference, though he feels a little less formed this early in Astro's life, is his personality. Unlike the Echo, Astro plays host to both Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and its own unpredictable, non-verbal personality, expressed through two animated eyes and a wide variety of playful beeps, buzzes and purrs. That personality is still in the making, but it definitely lends the little robot a different flavor than Amazon's smart display counterparts.
How well does Astro work?
Astro performs an incredible number of tasks with very different performance. Here's a breakdown of each of the basic usage categories and how Amazon's little bot actually performed them.
Establish
Like many of Amazon's smart home devices, the Astro has a super-simplified setup process that prompts you through the steps with on-screen instructions. The whole process could have gone fairly quickly, but I ran into some problems right away.
The Astro took much longer to map out CNET's Smart Home, where I spent most of my time testing the device, than the 30 minutes the apps offered. You can hear more about the process in our first impressions video, but Astro basically couldn't map the house because the floors were too shiny, the windows near the charging station were too bright, or the exposed staircase leading down from the entryway surrounded by railings. may be causing the mapping process (Amazon rep couldn't be sure when troubleshooting over the phone). So we covered the windows and railings with cardboard to dim the light and create a brighter, wall bounding for the Astro, set it to map the floor and hit the ground running.
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