Lenovo is debuting Show Mode for laptops during CES 2021, making its PCs more tied into the smart home than ever before — and giving you an even bigger screen for everything Alexa can tell you about.
This brings Show Mode out of the world of tablets, and makes it more ubiquitous. We're betting that other laptop makers will follow suit with Alexa integration in the coming years. And, of course, you can do all of these tricks with just your voice.
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In order to hear you properly, Lenovo will pair Show Mode with PCs that feature microphones with far-field technology. These will include Yoga and IdeaPad laptops to start, and it will arrive in Q2 2021.
As for what it can do, Show Mode will have a lot of the standard options. You can control smart home devices through commands, and that should be great to have in a laptop as it's a lot less stationary than a smart speaker.
Of course, you'll also be able to set reminders, play music from Amazon Music, turn on local radio, ask questions about the weather and see your calendar and news updates at a glance when passively using it.
This isn't the first Alexa integration in PCs, but it looks to be one of the smoother and more natural paths to the assistant making it to Windows 10. Meanwhile, in Apple land, the MacBook is still keeping Siri at arm's length — but we're not exactly complaining.
