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Amazon

A promising tech startup called Roav is bringing the Amazon Echo's smart speaker capabilities to a new place: your car.

Its new car charger, called the VIVA, has Amazon's Alexa built into it, letting you ask questions, play music, and get directions using only your voice.

It's not perfect 100% of the time, but the VIVA does, in fact, make your car a lot smarter, and it opens up the door for iPhone users to operate third-party maps and music services with their voice while driving.



Millions of people — myself included — have invited the Amazon Echo into their home to answer questions and control their various smart home accessories. Although Amazon has made it easier than ever to find an Echo device that fits into every room of your house, there's still one common place left untouched: the car.

Roav, a sub-brand of the tech accessory maker Anker, recently released the VIVA, a car charger with Alexa built into it. It's still early days for this gadget, but I'm coming around to the idea of having a fully-featured Echo in my car.

The VIVA looks like car chargers we've recommended in the past: It isn't much bigger than a regular car charger, it fits in the cigarette lighter socket cars have had for decades, and it has two USB ports you can use to plug in and charge your gadgets. The one tell that the VIVA is a little different is the microphone button on its top that you can use to mute it.

Setting up the VIVA is pretty simple. After downloading the Roav app, you'll be asked to plug the dongle in, grant it permission to your location data (that's optional though), link it to your Amazon account, and say whether your phone is connected to the car's stereo via a cable or Bluetooth.

I've read some reviews from people who say their phone never connected to the VIVA, but I didn't have that problem. The device's firmware was updated twice during my testing, which proves Roav is trying to fix these problems.

After it's set up, the VIVA car charger is, well, basically an Amazon Echo.

I asked Alexa to turn on some smart bulbs as I was pulling into my parking space, and they were on when I entered my apartment. I asked her to play certain songs, and if they were available via Prime Music, they played. Spotify support is coming soon, which is great for iPhone users like myself who have been stuck with Apple Music as our only option for voice-requested music streaming.

If you grant the VIVA access to your location data, you can ask Alexa for weather information and driving directions. It's nice that you can choose whether you want the VIVA to give you directions from Google Maps, WAZE, or "built-in maps," which on iOS means Apple Maps, but I found the feature to be a little hit or miss.

I could get directions "Home" because I specified my home location in Google Maps, but not Astoria, Queens. Manhattan, San Francisco, and the Empire State Building were all recognized as destinations, but Alexa might have trouble with suburbs and lesser-known locations. Still, getting Google Maps directions using only my voice — when it worked — was excellent.

As a gadget, the VIVA succeeds in making your car smarter, and I can only imagine it's going to get smarter over time. You don't lose any features by upgrading your car charger to a VIVA, and if you're an iPhone user, it actually opens up some pretty interesting opportunities.

Now that I'm not stuck with Apple Music and Apple Maps as my hands-off music and directions options, I may actually change which services I use. That behavioral change is pretty big for me, and I give Roav credit for making an accessory compelling enough to make me consider it.

Whether you're a tech enthusiast who wants to upgrade their car, or an Amazon Echo fan who wants to take Alexa on the road with them, the Roav VIVA is well worth checking out.