Amazon.com Inc. today introduced four new additions to its Echo line of smart home devices and refreshed its Kindle Scribe e-reader.
The gadgets, which are rolling out alongside enhancements to Alexa+, made their debut at the company’s annual consumer hardware event in New York.
Amazon’s first device, the Echo Dot Max, is an entry-level smart speaker priced at $99.99. It features two speakers supported by a woofer and a tweeter. Woofers and tweeters are specialized speakers optimized to produce low and high frequency sounds, respectively.
Amazon says that the Echo Dot Max can provide “nearly 3x the bass” as its predecessor. Bass is the term for a specific set of low frequency sounds produced by many musical instruments.
The Echo Dot Max is powered by a custom chip called the AZ3. According to Amazon, it includes a dedicated artificial intelligence accelerator. The enhanced silicon improves the conversation detection feature that Alexa+ uses to process user instructions.
The Max is joined by a higher-end smart speaker, the Echo Studio, that will ship for $219.99. It’s a refreshed version of a device that Amazon originally introduced in 2019. The company has replaced the first Echo Studio’s cylindrical design with a spherical form factor that is 40% smaller.
Its case hosts a woofer and three audio producing modules called drivers. There’s support for spatial audio, which means the device produces sounds in a manner that gives the impression they originate from different directions and distances. That facilities more realistic audio.
The Echo Studio is powered by a more advanced version of the chip in the Echo Dot Max. The AZ3 Pro, as the upgraded chip is called, supports language models and vision transformers. A vision transformer is a computer vision model based on the transformer architecture.
The Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio both support a new feature called Alexa Home Theater. Using the feature, consumers can link up to five of the smart speakers with a Fire TV stick to create a home theater setup. The Fire TV stick is a compact device that can be plugged into a TV to give it access to streaming services.
The AZ3 Pro chip in the Echo Studio also powers the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11, the two other smart home devices that Amazon debuted today. They’re smart displays that measure 8.7 inches and 11 inches, respectively. The Echo Show 8 is set to ship for $179.99 while the Echo Show 11 will be priced at $219.99.
The devices are based on the same design. Their respective screens include more than a million pixels, as well as enhancements that enable them to provide better clarity in dimly lit rooms than Amazon’s earlier hardware. The devices’ audio system comprises front-facing stereo speakers and a woofer that supports spatial audio.
According to Amazon, its engineers added a 13-megapixel camera that enables Alexa+ to detect when the user enters the room and generate a greeting. Alexa+ is the latest iteration of the company’s voice assistant that debuted in February. It features better information retrieval and automation features than the original.
A new capability called Alexa+ Home will enable Echo Show users to control their other smart home devices. Additionally, an Alexa+ shopping widget makes it possible to track e-commerce deliveries. It’s also useful for related tasks such as finding gift recommendations.
Rounding out the list of new Alexa+ features is the Alexa+ Store. It provides access to thousands of devices and services from Amazon partners. Additionally, customers can use it to centrally manage their subscriptions.
The Echo devices are joined by three new editions of Amazon’s Kindle Scribe e-reader, which includes a set of note-taking features not included in other Kindle devices. All three device editions offer an 11-inch glare-free display. One version includes a front light, another doesn’t, and the third features a color screen powered by nitride LEDs.
Amazon has also made other improvements. The new Kindle Scribe editions are lighter than the previous-generation device series, feature more memory and include a new quad-core processor. Amazon says that upgrades will speed up page turns and certain writing tasks by 40%.
Photo: Amazon
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