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Amazon's Echo Input offers Alexa for your existing speakers

It's like a Chromecast Audio with a digital assistant built in.

The latest gadget Amazon is shoehorning Alexa into is an audio dongle called the Echo Input. The $34.99 media bridge has line inputs, Bluetooth and a far-field mic. Think of it like a combo Chromecast Audio and Google Home Mini, but without the speaker and sold by Amazon versus Google and you've got the basic gist.

Clearly, the company wants its digital assistant in more places, and has heard people griping about how poor the sound quality is on its Echo devices, or, those who use the line-out connection to connect them to their pre-existing, more powerful dumb speakers.

It's available for pre-order right now and will ship later this year. Most interesting? Amazon says that the device is designed to ship with other speakers from third parties and that we'll see evidence of that in the coming months.

Follow all the latest news from Amazon's Alexa event here!