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Amazon's Dash is 'remote control' for buying groceries

07 Apr 2014

Nothing even remotely 2001-ish about this. Nope.


Amazon announced a new stand-alone gadget today called the Dash. It's basically a remote control for buying groceries. The <span class="s1">small, handheld gadget itself is free, but the catch is you can only use it to order food and other goods from Amazon Fresh, the company's same-to-next-day delivery service.

Dash automates the task of creating a shopping list.

It looks like a little wand, and you can speak into it, or use it to scan a barcode. Dash then adds those items to your Amazon Fresh account. When you're ready, all the items you've added are there waiting for you to schedule a delivery. You have to be an Amazon Prime Fresh customer to get one (Prime Fresh costs $300 (£180) per year, and is only available in a few cities) and, for now at least, you'll also need an invitation code from Amazon.


Look, this is rad. We haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet, but it looks incredibly beguiling-dangerous even, in that it's going to make it super easy to buy things. There's no app to launch. It's just there, on. That loop on the end of the handle?

That's where you're going to hang it on your refrigerator or pantry. Yes, you can already do a lot of this with smartphone apps.

But this is just easier and faster and dedicated. Dedicated devices don't always make sense (see: cameras). But other times, they're incredibly useful. This looks to be one of those times.

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