Amazon unveils Echo Studio with Home Camera and first Dot with smart home control

All-new Echo/Launch

Alongside the reveal of the all-new Echo Show 16 at $100 off, Echo Time smart alarm clocks, and Alexa Photo Frame, Amazon has also unveiled the next-generation Echo smart speakers. The Echo Dot is getting an overhaul and is now available for purchase in four colors alongside the upgraded Amazon Echo Studio with Home Camera.

All-new Amazon Alexa gear:

• Echo Show 16 from $400
  • Customers who preorder Echo Show 16 get $100 off.
• Amazon Echo Dot $100
• Amazon Echo Studio with Home Camera $250
• Amazon Alexa Photo Frame from $200
• Amazon Echo Time $200

Amazon Echo Studio with Home Camera

The major news here today on the Echo speaker side of things is the all-new Amazon Echo Studio with Home Camera – it adds “adds visual intelligence to Amazon’s best-sounding speaker” that allows Alexa to “see and help.”

The Home Camera edition is largely the same as the previously-released model otherwise, delivering the same “powerful audio architecture” that makes for Amazon’s best sounding speaker by way of the high-excursion woofer, full-range drivers, Dolby Atmos, and Advanced Room Adaptation – “continuously tunes the sound to your space, automatically adapting to the room’s acoustics.” It also sports Adaptive Volume – “adjusts to where you are so your music or audiobook maintains the same volume as you move about.” 

However, it also now carries a built-in camera allowing Alexa to gain visual intelligence. This enables Live View in the Alexa app so you can “check in on the room when you’re away,” but Alexa can also “see and understand” what it’s looking at too:

Pull out a board game box and ask Alexa+ to explain the rules or hold up a cereal box and Alexa can recognize it and help you reorder more flavors. Soon, you will also be able to pair the Echo Studio with Home Camera with a compatible Fire TV device to bring video calls to the big screen, making it easy to catch up with family and friends from the comfort of your living room.

New Amazon Echo Dot

It very much looks the same, save for the new colorways, but Amazon says the new Amazon Echo Dot is the most capable yet.

A sort of catch-all, anywhere type of home speaker, the spherical design is back, alongside the 3D knit finish, it sounds like the real upgrades here come by way of the built-in smart home hub for the first time, Amazon’s custom-designed AZ3 silicon, and the internal sound reproduction system:

And we’ve made it even better. A full-range driver built into the housing creates more back volume for crisp vocals and 50% more bass than the last generation.

The AZ3 chip enables “advanced on-device processing for faster, more natural conversations with Alexa+.” There’s also the addition of a fourth mic so Alexa can hear you better “as you move around the room” alongside Voice ID so it knows who is talking: 

“Voice ID can recognize who’s speaking and personalize your experience, like playing your favorite playlist instead of your partner’s. And with Omnisense, our custom sensor fusion platform, Echo Dot can sense the environment around it, detecting things like room temperature and presence so Alexa can make your home more responsive—turning up the thermostat when the room is too cold, or turning on the lights as you walk in.”