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If you love Amazon’s Alexa and miss it when you are driving, there is now a way to bring Alexa into your car with the Garmin Speak. Granted, there are other ways of having Alexa in your car. There are hacks that show how you can use an Echo Dot in a car. However, with the Garmin Speak, you don’t need to fiddle with WiFi tethering unlike the Echo Dot. All you need is connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and the Alexa app will do the rest.

The Garmin Speak as you might have guessed is first and foremost a Garmin GPS navigation device for your car which has Alexa built in. It has a tiny display screen that shows turns when navigating. Depending on where you drive and your personal preference, that may or may not be sufficient for your navigation needs. For us, we still prefer a full map display on our phone screens.

While it is quite cool to verbally ask Alexa to find you the closest gas station or recommend a cafe, the Garmin Speak’s biggest appeal is not communicating with your GPS device via voice control but the fact that it allows you to do almost everything that you can do with Alexa at home but in your car. You can ask Alexa to read out your news briefings, ask about the weather or even control music playback although there isn’t any support for music streaming via Spotify or iTunes yet at this moment. If you like, you can do your Amazon shopping while you drive. If you have an Alexa controlled smarthome, you can control your smart devices via the Garmin Speak as well.

One other appeal of having Alexa in the car is that kids love Alexa. You can now keep the small ones entertained by playing games with Alexa or ask Alexa to tell silly jokes.

The Garmin Speak device is really tiny and looks very much like a shrunken version of the Echo Dot. It has that light ring around the edge whenever Alexa is activated. The device connects to the internet via a Bluetooth connection with your phone. It also can connect via Bluetooth to your car’s audio system. If your car audio system does not support, you can use the Garmin Speak’s AUX out instead.

To mount the Garmin Speak, all you have to do is to stick the included magnetic disc somewhere in your car like your dash, windshield or the rearview mirror. The device itself has a magnet that allows it to mount securely to the disc.
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