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The new Amazon Dash Wand uses Alexa to restock your fridge

Amazon is introducing a new piece of hardware called the Amazon Dash Wand, made to quickly restock items that you use every day using barcode scanning.

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Published onJune 15, 2017

Amazon has been on a roll with hardware releases the last couple of months, announcing two new Echo devices for different users just recently. Today, the company is looking to expand its Dash services by announcing a new product that will help you order things you use on a daily basis.

The new device is called the Amazon Dash Wand, and is a small magnetic stick that includes a barcode scanner as well as the Alexa voice assistant built right in. When you scan barcodes of everyday objects, Amazon will automatically add it to your cart for purchase. The idea is for you to keep it mounted to your fridge, where you can scan common food items when they start to get low.

There is a small button present on the Dash Wand that activates the Amazon Alexa virtual assistant, which can do all the same tasks as a traditional Echo device. You can ask it for recipes, order food for quick delivery, and even manipulate your lights like you would with an Echo, Echo Dot, and soon Echo Look and Echo Show. You can also speak to the device and tell it to add individual items if you don’t have anything to scan, or simply ask it to order the items immediately.

For the first period of sales, Amazon is charging $20 for the new wand, but is also giving you a $20 credit when you register it to your account. In this way it’s essentially free as long as you use those $20 on Amazon, and the company is also giving you 90 days of free Amazon Fresh service for participating areas, which normally costs $15 a month.

Does the Dash Wand make sense to you? We could see it being extremely useful for places like restaurants which need to order much of the same food over and over again.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.