Huawei’s bargain AI Speaker looks awfully familiar

You know how annoying it is when you’re watching a film and you just can’t work out what you’ve seen one of the actors in before? That’s not a problem you’re likely to have with Huawei’s new smart speaker. Stick it in a line-up with Apple’s HomePod and a fair few people would struggle to tell the difference, while the buttons and blue light ring on the top are more than a little reminiscent of Amazon’s Echo range. Inside is a 10W speaker with six microphones for picking up voice commands, although you’ll need to learn to speak Chinese if you want to use it because it only has Huawei’s Xiaoyi voice assistant onboard. It also only has a Chinese name, which translates as simply AI Speaker, but with a price that converts to less than £50, your bank balance is probably hoping it makes the journey from there to here before too long.