Get your holiday wishlists ready. Amazon’s Wednesday event included upgrades to its Echo, Fire TV, Blink, and Eero lineup. Plus, an AI-enhanced Alexa wants to chat.
Ahead of the holiday shopping season, Amazon today unveiled a refreshed lineup of smart home devices, including updated versions of its Echo smart displays and speakers and Fire TV media streamers. Its Ring and Blink divisions also showed off new security cameras, while AI found its way to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
Most of these devices won’t launch in time for Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days on Oct 10-11, but you can preorder a lot of them now for a late October delivery. Here’s what you can get.Echo Devices
The new Echo Show 8 features a rounded edge and a newly designed bump-out on the back, which makes it slightly bigger. The 13MP front-facing camera is also centered versus off to the side. The main internal upgrade here is the built-in Zigbee smart home hub and Amazon’s AZ2 Neural Edge processor instead of a MediaTek MT 8183. There are also some audio upgrades and a feature that will sense where you are in the room to display fewer things when you’re far away and more detail as you walk closer. Preorder the Echo Show 8 now for $149.99; it ships on Oct. 25.
For those who use their Echo Show primarily as a digital picture frame, a photo-centric version of the Echo Show 8 will rotate through user-picked photos every 30 seconds and includes 25GB of Amazon Photos storage. Prime members already have free, unlimited, high-resolution photo storage, but they’re limited to 5GB of free video storage, so Amazon is pitching that 25GB as extra video storage space for Prime members. Buyers also get a six-month subscription to PhotosPlus and $1.99 per month after that. It launches this fall for $159.99.
This scaled-down Echo Show 15 looks like a thermostat or home security system, but it’s an 8-inch touch-enabled display where you can manage smart cameras, organize widgets, or just check the time. It’s $179.99 and not yet available for preorder; sign up to be notified when it launches.
This kids version of the Echo Pop smart speaker features Marvel or Disney Princess characters and comes with six months of Amazon Kids+. Preorder for $49.99 ahead of an Oct. 25 launch.
Want to talk to Alexa through your glasses? The third-gen Echo Frames promise extended battery life (up to six hours of continuous media playback), better Alexa performance, and a more stylish look, starting at $269.99. No launch date was announced; interested buyers can sign up to be notified when they go on sale.Amazon Fire Tablets
Amazon promises 25% faster performance over the previous version, a one-hour battery life boost to 13 hours, and a 5MP front-facing camera, up from 2MP.
