Amazon has announced the biggest overhaul of its Echo line-up in years, with two new speakers and two new smart displays coming out soon. All are designed with better audio, new sensors and are built to “unlock new gen AI experiences through Alexa+”.
All of which sounds very exciting, except for one big problem in the UK: we don’t have Alexa+. Nor is there a clear launch date for the service. In the official press release, all Amazon says about Alexa+ is “once available in the UK”.
Confirmation that the service will be available in the UK is good, but a firm launch date would be better, particularly as so many of the features talked about for the new products rely on this subscription service.
So, what’s new?
Echo Dot Max
An update to the Echo Dot (5th Generation), the new speaker’s ‘Max’ name refers more to its performance and sound, as it’s still the smallest speaker of the group.
A redefined body places the light ring and controls facing forwards, but it’s inside that we see the biggest changes: dual speakers and bass that is, apparently, three times that of the previous Echo Dot’s.
There’s a high-excursion woofer inside, and a custom tweeter for crisp high notes. This speaker will cost £99.99 and will be available on 29 October.
Echo Studio
There’s no new Echo, with the 4th Generation seemingly the last ‘standard’ speaker that we’ll see. Instead, we have a new Echo Studio replacing the older version that came out in 2022.
From the looks of the new product, it seems to merge the home-cinema-focused original Echo Studio with the standard Echo. It makes sense. Why have two products that cross over so much?
Again, the new speaker has a design that puts the controls and light ring facing forwards and there’s a new focus on sound quality: three full-range drivers, a high-excursion woofer and support for spatial audio and Dolby Atmos.
This speaker will cost £219.99 and will be available on 29 October.
Better audio experiences
Clearly, Amazon seems to be going for the high-end audio market with its new speakers, and that makes a lot of sense.
At launch, the Echo speaker was the first of its kind, just an AI assistant. As times have changed, people seem less keen on having more speakers around, and want devices that can produce quality audio first, with smart features coming next. That is what the new Echo speakers seem to do.
They’ll also have a new trick: you can connect up to five Echo Studio or Echo Dot Max speakers to a Fire TV stick for immersive surround sound, with the speakers automatically tuning to the room.
Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11
I still stand by the fact that the Echo Show devices deliver arguably the best overall Alexa experience, so it’s good to see two revamped smaller models, following the launch of the Echo Show 21 and Echo Show 15 (2024).
Amazon has completely refreshed the ageing design, and the new models have floating screens that look nicer. In-cell touch and negative liquid crystal allow for higher viewing angles, which is important given that these smart displays need to be viewable from anywhere.
There’s a new audio architecture, too: front-facing stereo speakers and a custom woofer. The Echo Show 8 will cost £179.99 and the Echo Show 11 £219.99. Both will be available on 12 November.
New silicon for Alexa+
All of the new speakers have brand-new silicon chips (the AZ3 and AZ3 Pro), and an AI accelerator designed to run AI edge models of the future. The Echo Dot Max uses the AZ3 which offers better conversation detection.
The other new speakers use the AZ3, which Amazon says “builds on the power of AZ3’s audio capabilities, adding support for state-of-the-art language models and vision transformers”.
In addition, there’s Omnisense, which is a custom platform designed for ambient AI. As Amazon says, “Omnisense leverages a range of sensors and signals—the 13-megapixel camera on our new Echo Show devices, audio, ultrasound, Wi-Fi radar, accelerometer, and Wi-Fi CSI. This technology allows Alexa to intelligently act on various events happening in and around your home, enabling more personalized, proactive, and helpful experiences, such as delivering a reminder when a specific person walks in the room, or a proactive alert that your garage door is unlocked and it’s after 10 p.m.”
In other words, the new chips are faster and built to run advanced AI, such as Alexa+.
Launched at the start of the year, Alexa+ is a subscription service that makes Alexa smarter: more fluent conversations, the ability to build routines with voice and the ability to extract information from documents that you send it, such as recipes.
As a platform, Alexa+ is far more impressive than standard Alexa, but it was limited to work with the existing range of Echo Show devices. Amazon’s new launch extends Alexa+ into the smart speakers and introduces more powerful Echo Show devices to handle the service better.
Opinion
Here in the UK, the lack of Alexa+ does somewhat dampen the enthusiasm for the new speakers.
Sure, better audio is always appreciated, but is it worth paying for new speakers on the promise of this alone, while the new silicon isn’t used to its max at launch?
That, we’ll have to discover when review samples are available, but it’s a shame that Alexa+ still doesn’t have a UK launch date.
