Remember when an Echo was just a speaker that yelled out the weather when you asked nicely? Well, Amazon clearly doesn’t. Much like how the new Kindle Scribe decided it wasn’t enough to just display books, and the new Fire TV decided it wanted to be your home’s entertainment general, the new Echo lineup has joined the uprising. Except now, they’re rocking Amazon’s latest AI assistant, Alexa+, which, if you didn’t know, talks to people twice as much as regular Alexa. Twice the chatter, twice the bossiness.
At the heart of this fresh Echo family are Amazon’s custom AZ3 and AZ3 Pro chips, complete with an AI accelerator that makes these gadgets faster, smarter, and creepily more attentive. Pair that with “Omnisense” sensor fusion—which uses cameras, Wi-Fi radar, accelerometers, and probably a bit of wizardry—and you’ve got a speaker that doesn’t just hear you, it knows you walked into the room and is ready to comment on your garage door being open past bedtime.
The lineup includes the Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11. The Dot Max now rocks a proper two-way speaker setup (tweeter + woofer), pushing nearly three times the bass of its predecessor. The Studio shrank 40% in size but kept its big-room Dolby Atmos swagger, while the Shows get sharper displays, spatial audio, and cameras smart enough to recognize you before you’ve had your morning coffee. Handy, but also slightly unsettling.
And because Amazon knows you’re building a little home theater on the cheap, you can wirelessly link up to five Dots or Studios with your Fire TV for a surround system that usually costs thousands.
As for pricing, the Dot Max comes in at US$99.99, the Studio at US$219.99, the Show 8 at US$179.99, and the Show 11 at US$219.99. Pre-orders are live now, with devices rolling out between October 29 and November 12.
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Images: Amazon.
