Alexa+ is about to be on a lot more surfaces in the home. Beyond the kitchen counter, the company now wants its assistant on your nightstand, your wall and your bookshelf. After weeks of staggered product reveals, the Echo family has gained a refreshed Echo Dot, a camera-equipped Echo Studio and a redesigned Echo Show 16. It has also added two new product types: the Echo Time smart alarm clock and the Alexa Photo Frame.
The Echo Dot is still the entry point, though at $99 it is no longer the impulse buy earlier generations were. It gains a fourth beamforming microphone, revised noise reduction and a new AZ3 chip, which the company says speeds up Alexa+ conversations. Voice ID handles personalised features such as individual playlists. The speaker also works as a Zigbee, Thread and Matter hub and as an Eero Wi-Fi extender. It ships today in four colours, and a $110 kids model bundles a year of Kids+.
The Echo Studio with Camera ($250) is the more curious addition. The company says the camera does not record footage. Instead, it offers live views of your home, face recognition for personalisation and visual questions for Alexa+. The more interesting use is Advanced Room Adaptation, which uses Omnisense to count the people in a room and adjust audio and volume to where they are. The original Studio stays on sale.
Echo Time ($199) is aimed at sleep. An ultrasonic transducer detects when you’re asleep, and the clock uses light to wake you during a lighter sleep phase, anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes before your set time. There’s no camera, and the 2.3-inch round screen dims below 0.3 nits. A $210 kids version adds parental management.
The Alexa Photo Frame starts at $200, or $229 with a birch or walnut frame. It pairs a 10-inch touchscreen with Amazon Photos and Alexa+, which can pick the best shots of a person for you.
The Echo Show 16 is 40 percent thinner than before and adds a 13MP camera with night vision. It also brings Alexa Home Map, which uses cameras to plot where your smart devices sit. It costs $500, or $570 with an anti-glare Nanomatte display, and is due to ship by the end of the year.
The pattern is hard to miss. Nearly every new device relies on cameras, presence sensing or sleep tracking, and Apple’s rival HomeView is moving in the same direction. The privacy assurances behind these devices may face more scrutiny than the hardware itself. There is also no word yet on pricing outside the US or on Alexa+ availability in markets like the UAE.
