Amazon Testing Home Barcode Scanner to Make Ordering Groceries Lightning Fast

Rafe Needleman
·Editorial Director, Yahoo Tech
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If you’re a customer of Amazon Fresh, the online retailer’s grocery delivery service, you may be receiving an invitation to test the company’s new bar code scanner and voice ordering gizmo, the Amazon Dash.

The Dash is a pen-shaped device with a scanner and a microphone. The Amazon site about it says it’s rugged and simple to use. If you’re running out of cereal, you just zap the box’s bar code to add the item to your ordering list. If you need something without a bar code, you can just press the talk button and speak it into the device.

You finish ordering, presumably, by visiting the Amazon Fresh site, reviewing the items you’ve placed on your list with the Dash, and then completing your order.

We would strongly recommend that you review your order page closely before hitting Buy, as Amazon seems to have designed this thing for everyone in the family to use, including kids. You might want to make sure your adorable tiny roommates haven’t tried to commit you to purchasing 99 boxes of Count Chocula cereal.

Amazon says most items will arrive at your house the next day.

Not surprisingly, the Dash appears to be tied tightly to Amazon, unlike other scanners (like the Hiku) or apps (like GroceryIQ) that help you create shopping lists you can use with any store. In comparison, Amazon’s other big product launch this week, the Fire TV, works with services that compete with Amazon’s own TV service, like Netflix and Hulu Plus.

We’ll have more information about the Amazon Dash soon. For now, here’s Amazon’s promo video:

Rafe Needleman can be reached at rafeneedleman@yahoo.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @rafe​.