Amazon Debuts 16-Inch Echo Smart Display and Alexa Photo Frame

Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a range of new products centered around its Alexa artificial intelligence assistant, including refreshed Echo speakers, a digital photo frame and an Echo Show 16 with a sleek industrial design and retooled software interface.

The hardware, announced on Wednesday, continues a jam-packed few weeks of gadget introductions for the company and its devices chief Panos Panay. So far this fall, Amazon has debuted new Kindle e-readers, a totally overhauled tablet lineup and the latest smart home cameras from Ring, along with that brand’s first door lock. The new batch of products is meant to further cement Alexa’s presence in every room of the home as the company faces renewed competition from Apple Inc.

Most of the hardware is available now. The Echo Show 16 is ready for preorder and will begin shipping later this year, while the Alexa Home Map software will start rolling out in preview later this year. Here’s the rundown of what Amazon rolled out on Wednesday.

Echo Dot and Echo Studio with Home Camera

There are three new Echo speakers, though two of them are largely similar to their year-old predecessors with modest hardware upgrades. The standard Echo Dot has risen in price from $80 to $100. It can now serve as an advanced smart home hub and control thousands of accessories through native support for protocols like Zigbee, Thread and Matter.

This functionality was previously limited to the pricier Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio: The former device will remain in the lineup, even with the regular Dot inheriting most of its capabilities, since it provides richer sound quality. Amazon has cumulatively sold over 100 million Dot speakers, Panay said.

As for the latest Echo Studio, its price is also climbing higher to $250 from $220. Amazon has added a video camera to the speaker for the first time, giving Alexa visual intelligence. This allows the assistant to understand what’s in front of it and provide more relevant answers. For instance, users can hold up a board game box and ask Alexa+ to explain the rules, or show it a cereal box and have the assistant identify the product and help order other flavors, Amazon said.

In the coming weeks, owners of the Echo Studio with Home Camera will be able to pair it with a Fire TV streaming device for video conferencing. Panay demonstrated this feature by holding a brief call with his parents during a media briefing in advance of Wednesday’s news. Amazon will continue to sell last year’s Echo Studio, which lacks a built-in camera. The two models otherwise deliver identical audio performance, according to the company, and both offer its best sound quality.

Echo Time

The company’s most interesting new speaker is the $200 Echo Time, which shares the Dot’s spherical look with one key addition: There’s a circular display on the front that turns the speaker into an interactive digital clock. Users can swipe between numerous clock faces that allow for a wide variety of customizations, with options including analog, digital, and more playful styles. Disappointingly, it’s not possible to showcase personal photos on the Echo Time: You can only pick from the included faces.

Notably, there are no cameras anywhere on the product. This is by design, with Panay acknowledging that consumers are more sensitive about privacy in their bedroom — and the Echo Time is purpose-built for being used on a nightstand.

“Bedrooms are a pretty unique sacred space for many,” Panay said. “I never talk about what's not in a product, but sometimes it's a very important detail.”

The Echo Time’s 3.2-inch touchscreen display can dim itself to below 0.3 nits, so it won’t be a distraction in the dark when people are trying to sleep. And when they do drift off, the speaker’s integrated sleep sensing technology works in tandem with the alarm to wake them up during a light phase of sleep in the morning. It uses ultrasonic signals to detect how heavily someone is breathing. This wake-up can happen within 10 minutes to an hour of your set alarm, according to Amazon. Users can choose a fixed alarm instead if they’d rather have it go off at precisely the chosen time regardless of sleep stage.

Sleep sensing is an opt-in feature, and once enabled, it continuously monitors throughout the night. Amazon is exploring other ways of putting the system to use, though it isn’t sophisticated enough for health purposes like snoring detection or alerting users of possible sleep apnea. Like the new Echo Dot, the Echo Time has full smart home hub functionality built into the device, and it can synchronize with smart lights to slowly brighten the room as you wake up.

The Echo Time can temporarily show music controls and notifications — such as when someone rings your smart doorbell — but automatically returns to the clock face after a few seconds. It also lacks certain features found on other Echo smart displays, such as a calendar view.

Alexa Photo Frame

The Alexa Photo Frame, a direct challenger to similar products from Aura Home Inc., comes in three different finishes: Black is the most affordable at $200, with genuine birch and walnut frames both priced at $230. The device has a 10-inch semi-matte, anti-glare touchscreen display that automatically adjusts its brightness based on ambient lighting. It’s designed to sync photos from the company’s Amazon Photos service, which offers free unlimited image backups for Prime subscribers. And since it has integrated microphones, users can ask Alexa to pull up photos of a certain person or memory on cue.

“It's designed around three principles,” Panay said. “One is a collection of faces. The other one is around time. And the last one is around context. And so Alexa curates all your photos around those three premises.”

The company says Alexa is smart enough to prioritize a user’s best images and weed out screenshots and other content that no one would want to appear on the frame. Alexa will also look for connections across a photo library and display two photos side by side — like shots comparing the same person at a younger and older age. You can also attach voice memos to images and play back the recordings with a few taps. And in a bid to establish the Alexa Photo Frame as a popular gift, Amazon will let buyers pre-configure the device to show a collection of photos as soon as a recipient opens and sets it up. “They see the photo you gave them, and they hear the voice and the message you give,” Panay said. “It’s quite powerful.”

Panay dismissed the idea of Amazon Photos being a point of friction when most consumers store their image libraries with either Apple’s iCloud Photos or Google Photos, since the Amazon Photos app can back up photos stored on an iPhone or Android phone. “It doesn't take them out of the current photo library. You can still use the photo app that you love,” he said.

Echo Show 16

With Apple’s $299 HomeView finally set to arrive on Nov. 13, Amazon plans to ship a 16-inch smart display the following month with more features than the smaller newcomer — though at a steeper price. The $500 Echo Show 16 has the most premium design in the lineup to date.

“This is starting from zero from the hardware all the way through the software to the experience,” Panay said. It offers 10% more viewing area than the Echo Show 15, according to Amazon, with colors that are twice as vibrant. The anodized aluminum frame is nearly 40% thinner than the one on the Echo Show 15 and contains a reworked audio system with 10 total drivers that can produce sound that’s easily heard even in a raucous kitchen or living room.

As with the recent Alexa Tablet, the Echo Show 16 can be configured with Amazon’s new Nanomatte anti-glare screen — an option the HomeView doesn’t offer — to maintain display clarity in direct sunlight or under bright lighting. The Nanomatte version costs $570.

Amazon’s latest smart display has a 13-megapixel camera with the widest field of view offered on any Echo Show, and its Visual ID feature has been enhanced to recognize users as far as 17 feet away from the device. The Echo Show 16 also includes night mode if you want to keep an eye on things even in the dark.

Amazon is rethinking its approach to software with the new model, which has three dedicated “Screen Styles” that users can switch between: One is meant to be a family organizer, the second is a smart home dashboard and the last is a digital photo frame. The Echo Show 16 also runs Fire TV software and includes a remote control that can be used with entertainment apps.

Separately, Amazon is introducing an interactive “Alexa Home Map” that lets users create a 3D layout of their home by scanning each room with their smartphone. The map updates in real time with dynamic visuals, and if you own outdoor cameras, you’ll see animations of passing cars or people moving around your yard.

Smart home gadgets like Echo devices, Ring and Blink cameras, lights, locks and thermostats will appear in the right location, creating a more seamless method of controlling those devices directly from the map. The Alexa Home Map will roll out in preview later this year across numerous Amazon devices.