It’s a big year for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. It got a large language model power-up earlier this year in the form of Alexa+ (a paid upgrade for non-Amazon Prime subscribers), and now, Amazon has fresh hardware to take advantage of the assistant’s new capabilities. At an event in New York City, Amazon senior vice president Panos Panay took to the stage to unveil a slew of devices, ranging from a new TV operating system called Vega to power its Fire TV Stick to a Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. There are also finally new Echo speakers running Alexa+ out of the box, 2K and 4K Ring cameras, and new devices from Blink.
Here’s everything Amazon announced today.
New Echo Speakers and Displays
The Amazon Echo (4th Gen) hasn’t seen a refresh since 2020, but if you were expecting a 5th Gen model today, you’re out of luck. Instead, Amazon announced the Echo Dot Max ($100), a new Echo Studio ($220), an Echo Show 8 ($180), and an Echo Show 11 ($220).
Panay says the smart displays have vibrant, thin screens, the speakers have a new 3D knit fabric with no seams, and they’re all “acoustically transparent” for vibrant sound. The Echo Dot Max is powered by Amazon’s new AZ3 chip, with the other devices utilizing the AZ3 Pro. Amazon says they’re faster, more powerful, with faster wake-word detection and up-to-date on-device AI processing. They also feature Amazon’s Omnisense technology, which uses a range of sensors to help Alexa understand what’s happening in the home, such as whether your front door is unlocked at night, and it can also offer better personalized experiences for each person in the room.
The Echo Dot Max has two drivers and supposedly three times the bass performance of the previous Echo Dot. The Echo Studio bumps that up to three full-range drivers, a high-excursion woofer, and it’s built for spatial audio with Dolby Atmos support. The light ring is now on the front instead of the top, and it’ll light up when Alexa+ is listening, thinking, and talking. These two speakers support Alexa Home Theater, which lets you put together five Echo Studio or Echo Dot Max devices with a Fire TV for a surround sound home theater system.
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