Amazon has announced that the Echo, its personal assistant / Bluetooth speaker, will go on sale in retail stores in the U.S. in time for the holiday shopping season.

Before this, users were only able to buy Echo through the Amazon website itself, and stores offering the device include the likes of Home Depot, Sears, Staples, Fred Meyer, RadioShack, and P.C. Richard & Son. Interestingly enough, Best Buy is absent from the list of retailers to offer Echo. As far as price goes, the Echo will cost $179.99 in store, which is the same price that the device is sold for on the Amazon website.

"Amazon Echo is a must-have gift this holiday season, and we're excited to work with retailers across the country to make Echo available to their customers," said Greg Hart, Amazon Echo and Alexa Services vice president, in a statement. "Using only your voice to play music, control your lights, and ask questions is magical, so it's great that people will be able to visit local stores and try it for themselves."

The Echo itself is usable as a standard Bluetooth speaker, but its use goes beyond that as a voice-controlled personal assistant. Using the assistant, users can do things like make a to-do list, control connected appliances in the home, ask it to tell the user the weather and the news, and buy things from Amazon.

The device has also been continuously updated since it was released last year, with updates enabling the device to gain support for more and more connected appliances.

Of course, it might seem as though the Echo is a weird fit for Home Depot, however it's important to remember that the device will be Amazon's hub for the smart home. The company has been dabbling more and more in the smart home of late, releasing things like the Dash buttons, which allow users to place orders for devices at the press of a button.

Via: The Verge