Amazon Unveils New Echo Lineup Built Around Screens, Including a $499.99 Echo Show 16

Amazon has revealed its latest Echo hardware, along with updates tied to the AI-powered Alexa Plus, which became available to everyone in the US in February. The theme this year is screens: some devices feature large, high-quality displays, while others have none at all.

The lineup includes the Alexa Photo Frame, a new Echo Time smart alarm clock, an Echo Studio with Home Camera that has no screen, a fully redesigned Echo Dot, and the Echo Show 16, the company's new flagship smart display. Amazon devices chief Panos Panay describes the Alexa Photo Frame as "the world's smartest photo frame," and it also works as a full Alexa speaker.

The announcements follow a change in approach. Instead of a single large fall showcase, Amazon spread its hardware news across October. Earlier in the month it introduced new Fire TV devices, new Kindles, the Alexa Tablet Pro 12, Ring's first smart lock, new hardware from AI-wearable startup Bee, and new Blink 4K cameras. This week it hosted journalists at a small event in New York City's financial district to present the Echo products.

The Echo Show 16 is the priciest of the group. It costs $499.99 with a wall mount included, and a Nanomatte display option is available for $569.99. It comes with eight woofers and can run the full Fire TV experience by touch. It will not ship until December 16th, but preorders are open with a $100 discount. It also brings a new software experience with improved smart home controls, a better calendar interface, and a customizable photo frame option.

The Echo Time is a baseball-sized smart speaker with a 3.2-inch touchscreen that shows a wide choice of clockfaces. It includes a sleep-sensing feature meant to wake users at the right point in their sleep cycle. It costs $199.99 and can be ordered now. A notable upgrade over the Echo Spot is that alarms can be set by touchscreen, so people do not need to speak aloud and risk waking a partner.

The Echo Studio with Home Camera adds a built-in camera to Amazon's premium smart speaker. The camera can be used to monitor a room while away and to show things to Alexa, and video calls on Fire TV devices are planned. Amazon also added a feature called "Advanced Room Adaptation" that continuously tunes sound to the space, and an "Adaptive Volume" feature so that "your music or audiobook maintains the same volume as you move about."

The Alexa Photo Frame is built specifically to display family photos and competes with digital frames from companies such as Aura. Unlike Echo Show devices, it only shows photos and never serves ads. It costs $199.99 in black or $229 with a birch or walnut wood frame. It pulls images from Amazon Photos, which offers unlimited storage for Prime members, and otherwise requires no subscription. The Amazon Photos app can back up photos from Android and Apple devices and import from iCloud Photo, but importing from Google Photos is not yet supported.

Amazon also overhauled the Alexa Home Map, which is now an interactive 3D view of a home's interior and exterior. Using compatible Ring cameras, it offers a 360-degree view that animates nearby cars and people. It replaces the 2D map added to the Alexa app in 2023 and shows the locations of Echo devices, Ring and Blink cameras, Fire TV, lights, locks, thermostats and other connected devices.

Apart from the Echo Show 16, all of the new products, including the Echo Dot, Echo Studio with Home Camera, Echo Time and Alexa Photo Frame, are available to buy now.