Oopsie, made a whoopsie
We’ve finally seen our first glimpse of Alexa+, Amazon’s new subscription-based, AI-bolstered voice assistant, and it has me eating my hat.
No, not because of its new, exciting features, nor because of Alexa’s new, more personable nature, but because just a few days ago, I was dunking on the Echo Show 15.
I can separate my personal feelings from my ability to review a piece of tech, which is why the Echo Show 15 scored a respectable four out of five stars in my review. Still, as I noted then, I couldn’t fathom why Amazon decided it needed a refresh when so little had changed from the original Echo Show 15.
Now, I understand entirely, and it’s all to do with Alexa+.A display-first Alexa
At the demo we attended in New York City this week, pretty much all of the demonstrations for Alexa+ were run on an Echo Show 21, which immediately struck my colleague Jake Krol as an interesting indicator for the future of Echo Show devices. Not a single one of Amazon’s best smart speakers were on display, and we’ve got little to no idea how Alexa+ may interface as a voice-only smart assistant.
However, for me personally, it served as another reminder that sometimes, these big brands have more in store for their devices than we can imagine.
While testing the second-generation Echo Show 15, I was pleased with many of the upgrades but couldn’t quite fathom why Amazon felt the need to update a device so minimally. The audio has been improved, the now-13MP camera has a wider field, but generally speaking, it’s a very iterative update.
For a long time, Echo Show devices have been slightly more on the periphery for Amazon’s Echo smart speaker and display devices, especially in the larger 15 inch screen variation.
