Dash, Amazon’s portable barcode scanner, is now available for AmazonFresh customers in the UK to play with.

Well, we say UK, we really mean London - and even then it’s only available in the 128 postcodes Amazon’s picked for the public beta of its grocery delivery service. If you are one of the lucky few with a Prime Account able to sign up for AmazonFresh, then you can get sent an Amazon Dash dongle with your second Fresh order.

How Dash promises to revolutionise online food shopping is simple; every time you’re about to run out of something, you can use the Dash dongle to scan the barcode of the product and it’ll add it straight to your basket, whether that’s kitchen roll, washing up liquid or parmesan cheese. The Dash stick also supports voice commands, if you’d rather dictate your shopping requests to Amazon than manually scan them in.

The next time you’re ready to go to the AmazonFresh checkout, all of your Dashed items should already be there.

Ajay Kavan, Vice President of AmazonFresh says: “We’re all used to trying to remember the contents of the fridge and kitchen cupboard and scribbling down reminders on pieces of paper.

“With Dash, at any given time, customers can keep track of products when they come to mind and scan to reorder groceries and household essentials as soon as they run out. At Amazon, we’re always looking to innovate based on feedback and Dash has been designed to continually learn as customers use it.”

In the UK, Amazon sells over 130,000 products, including items from the Morrisons range Kellogg’s, Danone, Coca-Cola, Warburtons, Walkers, Yeo Valley and more.

While the Dash stick is currently available as a freebie, stocks are limited; an Amazon Dash normally costs £34.99 and can be added to any Fresh basket.

Currently only Amazon Prime customers in selected postcodes can sign up for AmazonFresh. Prime subscriptions cost £79/year and Fresh itself costs an extra £6.99/month, with unlimited deliveries for orders above £40.

Whether the magic Dash wand and the promise of free movies and TV will be enough to tear folks away from their beloved Ocado and Tesco Groceries apps remains to be seen.

Ocado doesn’t accept orders under £40 and charges a maximum of £6.99 per delivery if it’s under £75. Alternatively, you can sign up for an Ocado Smart Pass for £6.99/month, £34.99/six months or £69.99/year (both equivalent to £5.83/month). Tesco’s delivery plans start at £3/month or £30/year for midweek deliveries and £6/month and £60/year.