Amazon has made several new product announcements this year — one of the most recent being the exciting new Kindle lineup. The retail giant is back with another round of updates; this time in the smart home space. Amazon unveiled the new Echo Dot, Echo Studio with Home Camera, Echo Time, Echo Show 16, and Alexa Photo Frame.
All but the Echo Show 16 are available beginning Oct. 28 — the Echo Show 16 is available for preorder today, shipping later this year.
I got an early first look at the devices, so let’s dig into what’s new:
Echo Dot
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The new Echo Dot’s focus is two-fold: Better music listening and more advanced smart capabilities. It features a full-range driver for more back volume, delivering clear vocals and 50 percent more bass than the previous generation.
The smart speaker is powered by Amazon’s AZ3 custom silicon, which enables advanced on-device processing for faster, more natural conversations through Alexa+. It’s equipped with four microphones, up from the previous gen’s three, which helps Alexa better hear you as you move around the room and determine who’s speaking to personalize the experience.
Echo Dot users likely have other smart devices, and the new Echo Dot acts as a smart home hub, with built-in support for Zigbee, Matter, and Thread to control thousands of devices straight out of the box.
Arguably the coolest feature of the new Echo Dot is its ability to act as an eero WiFi extender, which adds up to 1,000 square feet of coverage to an existing eero network. The Echo Dot retails for $99.99 and is available in graphite, glacier white, agave green, and coral pink colorways.
Echo Studio with Home Camera
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Remaining Amazon’s best-sounding speaker, the Echo Studio with Home Camera got updated with, you guessed it, an onboard camera. It features Dolby Atmos sound that fills the room with spatial audio — new Advanced Room Adaptation senses your space to automatically adapt the room’s acoustics.
The camera expands Alexa+’s capabilities. It can tell who’s who, meaning each household member can ask Alexa to play music, and it’ll pull from their individual playlists. You can also drop in on a room within the Alexa app if you need to check in on a pet or make sure you turned off the lights before leaving home. And you can hold up items in front of the camera and Alexa will help you with myriad questions or tasks. Alexa can tell you the rules to a board game you hold up or help visually impaired people determine what’s in their hands.
If you have a Fire TV (or Fire TV Stick), you’ll be able to pair the Echo Studio with Home Camera to make video calls on the big screen.
In terms of privacy, the camera doesn’t record; it just streams live. And there are indicators when the camera is active. Like all Echo devices, there’s a dedicated button to turn off/on microphones and cameras.
The Echo Studio with Home Camera retails for $249.99 and is available in graphite.
Echo Time
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The Echo Time builds on what Amazon did with the Echo Spot and has even more reasons to earn a place on your nightstand. Amazon’s team designed it to be a clock first — they didn’t want it to feel like an on-your-face digital asset. It doesn’t have a camera, and the clock face screen is the main feature. You can personalize the clock face and choose different widgets, like date and time or weather, to include on the face.
With Echo Time, you can customize your wind-down or wake-up routines. The device has sensors that can monitor your breathing, detecting when you’re in lighter sleep. It wakes you at your optimal sleep stage within 10 to 60 minutes of your set alarm to help you wake up feeling less groggy. It’s not like the Hatch Sleep Clock, which fully tracks your sleep stages, but there are some similarities.
The display adapts throughout the day to mimic natural sunlight, dimming and reducing blue light at night. If you have smart lights, you can pair the two to wake you up together with a sunrise and gentle sounds.
There’s also a kids’ version of the Echo Time, which has more fun designs and engaging clock faces. The Amazon Kids Echo Time features support for Amazon Kids+ and Sleep Studio. The latter turns the device into a complete bedtime system, with curated sleep content from Headspace, Calm, and Moshi.
While the standard Echo Time is more geared toward waking up, the kids’ version is designed to aid in bedtime and help kids sleep better.
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Echo Show 16
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The Echo Show 16 is Amazon’s most powerful Echo Show yet. It features three new Screen Styles, so your home screen can act either as a smart home hub, family organizer, or digital photo frame. It also comes loaded with the full Fire TV experience, so you can watch your favorite shows and movies while you cook (or wherever you place your device).
The new Echo Show has 10 percent more viewing area than the Echo Show 15, is 40 percent thinner with a sleek aluminum frame, and can be wall-mounted or placed on a stand. It’s equipped with eight custom micro woofers and two tweeters for full sound no matter where it’s placed.
Amazon heavily considered what the UI of AI should feel and look like. So, they’ve redesigned Alexa conversations. Rather than just a list of transcripts, your conversations now get put into cards grouped by category or ask. You can tap into the cards and a rich conversation unfolds. In addition to your back-and-forth with Alexa, you’ll see suggested next steps, related videos, and more.
So, for example, let’s say you’ve asked Alexa about planning a trip to hike and see fall foliage in New York. Alexa will create a card, and once you tap in, you might find suggested hikes from AllTrails, YouTube videos of peak foliage times, and suggestions of other excursions to do while you’re there.
Your conversations appear as cards.
Credit: Miller Kern / Mashable
Tap into one and you’ll get a comprehensive conversation with Alexa.
Credit: Miller Kern / Mashable
Within the smart home hub on the Echo Show 16, you’ll be able to access the new Alexa Home Map, which lets you virtually map your home to control all of your smart devices room by room. To set it up, enter your address, then walk through your home, scanning each room with a compatible iPhone. Once the map is created, you can place your devices where they sit in your home. The map is interactive, so if you turn on a smart light in real life, you’ll see it glow on the map as well. It also integrates with Ring cameras, so you can get a comprehensive look at the happenings in and around your house.
The Echo Show 16 is available for preorder today, but won’t ship until closer to the holidays. It retails for $499.99 for a standard display, or $569.99 with a Nanomatte display. However, if you preorder the device, you’ll get an introductory price that’s $100 off MSRP.
Alexa Photo Frame
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Digital photo frames are not new technology, but Amazon is bringing Alexa to a digital frame to make it one of the smartest options in the category. The Alexa Photo Frame has a 10-inch anti-glare touchscreen display. It syncs with the Amazon Photos app, which provides unlimited storage with a Prime membership. Again, the team didn’t want this product to scream “digital asset,” and having seen it in person, it does blend in incredibly well with printed, framed photos.
It does more than just cycle through your camera roll. Alexa intelligently groups images based on people, places, and activities. And to avoid black bars on the sides of portrait mode images, Alexa will place two vertical photos side by side, grouped based on context. So, you might find two photos from your trip to Japan next to each other, or an image of your kid at 6 years old next to a photo of them graduating college (Alexa’s gunning for the waterworks). You can also ask Alexa to show you specific images, like “Show me all the photos of our trip to Japan,” and Alexa will cycle through that specific photo set.
Within the Alexa Photos app, you can also attach voice notes to individual photos. This adds a touch of sentimental value and acts as the writing on the back of a printed photo, explaining when and where it was taken.
The Alexa Photo Frame would be an awesome holiday gift, especially for parents. I know my mom would absolutely love one. And Amazon knows that, too. These are actually set up to be extremely giftable. You can buy a frame for somebody else, and you’ll get a link to collaborate and fill their Photo Frame with images from your library. And you can add a special touch with voice notes as well.
The Alexa Photo Frame starts at $199.99 in the black finish, and costs $229 for the real birch or walnut wood frames.
