The famous Italian brand has incorporated Amazon voice controls to a machine you still need to operate the old-fashioned way.
Here is a transcript of a conversation I had from the warmth of my bed this morning:
Me: (breathless, yelling) Hey Alexa, ask Lavazza to make the coffee extra hot ristretto!
I’m yelling “Hey Alexa” rather than “Hey Lavazza” because Lavazza, the Italian coffee machine maker, has just partnered with Amazon to make a new, voice-controlled coffee machine, the Lavazza A Modo Mio Voicy.
Lavazza has teamed up with Amazon to make the voice-controlled Voicy coffee machine.
Amazon’s voice control-system is called Alexa, and Alexa is built into the Voicy, allowing you to use it as a regular smart speaker – asking questions such as “Hey Alexa, what’s the weather?” – as well as use it as a voice-controlled coffee machine, as I am doing.
And I’m breathless because I’ve just run downstairs, popped a coffee capsule into the top of Voicy, and then run back upstairs again so I can have the pleasure of ordering coffee from bed.
Every morning since I started reviewing the Voicy, I have to do this. I realise I’ve forgotten to preload the machine with a coffee capsule the night before, so I run downstairs and do what I’ve come to think of as a “just-in-time” preload, which (I tell myself) has the advantage of ensuring the coffee doesn’t get stale sitting in the machine overnight with a punctured capsule.
The Lavazza A Modo Mio Voicy does have manual controls on it, which you’ll probably end up using instead of voice for everything but custom coffee drinks.
I’d prefer it if the Voicy were fully automated the way most voice-controlled appliances are (you don’t have to run downstairs to prepare your lights to come on, before you ask Alexa to turn your lights on, for instance), and that the coffee machine had a supply of coffee capsules that it loaded automatically the moment I yelled out a coffee request from bed.
But I can understand why Lavazza didn’t bother to add this feature, for it would still leave unsolved the problem of the coffee cup. They can’t really automate your glassware, which means at the very least you’re still going to have to walk (or, in my case, run because my floors are very cold) to the machine to place a cup under the spout, so you might as well load in the coffee capsule while you’re at it.
And, look on the bright side. Running downstairs to just-in-time preload the Voicy, and then running back upstairs again to make use of its voice-controlled feature, does get the blood pumping in ways that the 7.5 grams of coffee in a coffee capsule may fail to. It’s not a lot of coffee. By way of comparison, the group-head basket in a commercial espresso machine usually has 21 grams.
It’s sleek, portable and has a reasonably compact footprint.
Which is to say, the Voicy doesn’t make particularly strong coffee. I’d use two pods per coffee drink, except I’m not fit enough.
You’re probably asking yourself at this point, when he runs downstairs to just-in-time preload the capsule and place a coffee cup under the spout, why doesn’t he just press the little button on the machine to make the coffee, instead of running back upstairs to yell out to Alexa to press that button for him?
You’re probably thinking that adding voice controls to a coffee machine, without fully automating everything including the glassware, is an exercise in abject pointlessness.
Well, it is and it isn’t.
Notice that I asked the Voicy to make an “extra hot ristretto”. That’s a coffee I designed and named on the “Piacere Lavazza” app that you have to install on your phone when you’re setting up the Voicy and getting it onto your home WiFi so Alexa can work.
You can’t have everything! At least, by allowing coffee aficionados to create custom drinks, the Voicy rises above ‘abject pointlessness’.
The app lets you fiddle with the settings of the coffee machine, changing how much water is used in each shot of coffee, and how hot that water is, and then save those settings under a name you’ve invented, like “Dad’s extra-weak coffee” or, in this case, “Extra-hot ristretto”.
Then, when you yell at Alexa from your bed, you can ask her to ask the Lavazza to make your custom drink. (For some reason, you can ask Alexa directly to make you a coffee with the machine’s default settings, but if you want your custom drink, you need to ask Alexa to ask Lavazza.)
It’s probably worth mentioning that the ristretto I designed in the app is meant to have only 10 ml of water in it, rather than the 30 ml the Voicy wants to use as default, thereby giving me the dry-coffee-to-liquid ratio one might expect from a cafe-bought coffee drink.
But, in our tests, the Voicy actually pumps 17 ml of water into my ristretto, throwing out my ratios by rather a lot.
It appears the Voicy measures its water output by time rather than by volume, meaning any coffee drink you design is going to have more or less water in it, depending on the density of the coffee in the capsule. The odds of it giving you the exact measurement you asked for are probably slight.
Well, you can’t have everything! At least, by allowing coffee aficionados to create custom drinks (however imprecise), the Voicy rises above that “abject pointlessness” you mentioned.
Doubtless you’re also wondering what on earth someone who cares about coffee ratios would be doing anywhere near a capsule machine, when there are any number of more delicious ways to make a coffee than using capsules.
Lying in bed in the mornings, working up the courage to run downstairs and preload the Voicy with its capsule, I do wonder the same thing myself.
Anyway, back to the transcription. You’ll recall, I just asked for my custom ristretto . . .
Alexa: Of course! I’m switching on the Voicy. Your coffee will be ready in no time!
Alexa: While we’ve got your attention, we advise you to buy more capsules. Your cupboard is empty at the moment.
In the Piacere Lavazza app, you see, you can tell Lavazza how many coffee pods you have in your cupboard, and then the Voicy counts how many coffees you make and alerts you whenever your supply is running low, so you can order new pods in the app.
(Technically, the machine doesn’t count how many capsules you’ve used, but merely counts how many times the water pump has been activated. If you pre-flush the machine to heat it up before brewing, or if you use the Voicy without a capsule in it, to make hot water, you’ll throw out the count and get alerts long before you need them.)
So it turns out, adding voice controls to a largely manual coffee machine is all about frictionless commerce, and getting you to buy things before you even realise you need them.
This coffee machine is not quite as pointless as it may appear.
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