Lenovo laptops can take on a second life starting this week courtesy of Amazon who will happily turn some models into a smart display.
It’s called Alexa Show Mode, and will be available on select models of the Lenovo Yoga, IdeaPad, and ThinkPad laptops. Triggering Show Mode can be done either by saying “Alexa, open Show Mode,” or by clicking on the Show Mode button in the Alexa app installed on your laptop. After that, Alexa becomes a full-screen experience on your device.
“We are excited to bring Alexa’s rich, visual ambient experience to PCs.” said Aaron Rubenson, Vice President Alexa Voice Service and Alexa Skills. “Customers love the fact that Alexa is always accessible. With Show Mode, Alexa is helping make PCs more versatile and adaptive, enabling richer experiences throughout the home or wherever customers may take their PC.”
The supported laptops are those advertised as having “Alexa Built-in” and they can also be setup to automatically enable Show Mode when the device is idle. Once active, it can be used just like any other Alexa smart display to set reminders, make to-do lists, play audiobooks, or take advantage of over 100,000 Alexa skills through voice commands.
“Improving device simplicity and the user experience is at the heart of Lenovo’s customer-centric innovation culture. A voice-enabled interface will be a big part of that endeavor,” said Igor Bergman, Vice President of Cloud and Software, Intelligent Devices Group at Lenovo. “That’s why Lenovo is the first to bring to market Alexa Show Mode on PCs. By enabling Show Mode on Lenovo PCs, we are providing customers with a highly versatile user experience on a natural and convenient interface.”
Of course, if this is a feature you’d rather not have active on your Lenovo laptop, simply uninstall the Alexa app. Otherwise, it’s now available on supported devices across the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Ireland, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.
