AmazonBasics Microwave review: looks and works pretty much like a regular microwave, with some Alexa integration via Echo, and is good value at $60
Amazon's new “smart” microwave with Alexa is a microwave. It's not magic. — Yes, you can use your voice instead of pressing buttons.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon put the $59.99 AmazonBasics microwave on shelves in September as one of several cheap Alexa endpoints announced the same day, alongside the $49.99 Echo Auto dash accessory and, a year earlier, the $20 Dash Wand. The pattern across those launches is consistent: commodity household objects with WiFi and a microphone, priced barely above their dumb equivalents.
This first full review answers the obvious question about the microwave — and the answer is deliberately unglamorous. It heats food like any microwave; the 'smart' part is voice control routed through a separate Echo speaker, which means the device only earns its label inside an Alexa household.
First-order effects
- Buyers get a competent $60 microwave whose headline feature — talking instead of pressing buttons — is unusable without an Echo already in the kitchen, so the review effectively prices the real product at microwave-plus-speaker.
- Amazon gets a validated template for shipping Alexa-branded hardware at commodity prices, confirming the launch-day bet that reviewers would judge it on value rather than novelty.
Second-order effects
- Every unit sold widens Alexa's installed base into a room where Echo speakers had no natural foothold, giving Amazon more wake-word surface at near-zero margin while appliance rivals face pressure to bolt voice onto their own products or cede the countertop.
- The Dash Replenishment angle points toward consumables: a microwave that reorders popcorn ties kitchen purchases to Amazon's retail funnel, echoing what the $20 Dash Wand started with barcode-based food ordering.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, small appliances stop competing on cooking features and start competing on assistant compatibility, turning the kitchen into contested territory between voice platforms — with Amazon willing to sell the hardware at cost to win the endpoint.
- The longer-term question the review leaves open is whether voice adds enough utility in this category to matter at all, or whether these devices succeed purely as cheap distribution for the assistant rather than as better microwaves.
The trend: Amazon is seeding Alexa through commodity-priced household hardware, accepting thin margins on devices to expand the assistant's footprint room by room.