Call it whatever you like, but you can take away the fact that Xiaomi products have got good designs. This came to the fore once again with the launch of the Mi AI Touchscreen Speaker Pro 8. The smart speaker may soon get support for other voice assistants like Google Assistant but we’ll have to wait for more information in that regard. for now, the use of the speaker may be restricted to Chinese speakers but no harm in checking out the amazing design and software features that found their way into the touchscreen speaker.
The new Xiaomi’s Mi AI Touchscreen Speaker Pro 8 design bears some semblance with that of the Amazon Echo Show and may have been inspired by the Echo Show but can be regarded as a cheaper version manufactured with quality in mind.
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The smart speaker features an 8-inch touchscreen display panel having a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and an oleophobic coating. The display is surrounded by large bezels and at the top, there is a front camera. The back houses the speaker and it also extends to form the base. The power and volume buttons are located at the back panel on the left side just after the speaker. The charging port is located on the bottom right corner of the speaker. The device dorns the Mi logo on the speaker which is said to be tuned to deliver quality sound output.
For functionality, the Mi AI Touchscreen Pro 8 can be used to control a number of smart home products including those from IoT platforms such as Philips, Viomi, Yeelight, Smartmi, Konke, and Roborock. The speaker also comes with an advanced Bluetooth Mesh Gateway which enables connecting several devices at a go and that can be done via voice prompt. But as stated earlier on, we are not sure this is applicable outside the Chinese language. We expect Xiaomi to release a WiFi version later on.
You can equally deploy the Smart speaker for other uses, though, such as an alarm clock, a digital photo frame, and a Bluetooth speaker. For a 599 yuan ($86) gadget, it is worth having while we wait for XiaoAI to get an English version or Google Assistant to hop onboard.
Check out more unboxing/hands-on pictures of the Mi AI Smart Speaker Pro 8 from the gallery below.
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