If you’re new here, welcome to fall in the consumer tech space, as many dub it Techtober. Google’s turn for phones was in mid-August, Apple’s iPhones were in September, and now we have Amazon to finish off September. Earlier this morning, Amazon held its fall hardware event in NYC and unleashed a plethora of new devices under its Echo, Kindle, Fire TV, Ring, and Blink monikers. There wasn’t a livestream online to watch, and we were not in attendance, but we got you covered to recap all of the big news you may have missed.
New Echo devices
Amazon unveiled its newest Echo Show smart displays, arriving in both 8-inch and 11-inch sizes. If you’ve seen the previous models, you can notice a new design with an overall slimmer screen and a powerful speaker wrapped in fabric. Both sizes are equipped with a 13MP wide-angle camera to capture and detect more people in its viewfinder, new visual updates to its UI, and are powered by Amazon’s new AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant, which is subscription-based, more conversational, and can do more than regular Alexa, such as call an Uber, draft emails, and more. The Echo Show 8 has a 720p screen and costs $180, while the Echo Show 11 has a 1080p screen and costs $220.
Next up, we have the new $100 Echo Dot Max, which is an upgrade from $50 Echo Dot in both features and pricing. It provides a more powerful speaker with 3x more bass, uses higher-quality fabric, and better mics than its predecessor. It also adds an LED light ring in front, which houses the speaker controls and allows access to Alexa Plus.
The new $220 Echo Studio speaker somehow gets smaller but more powerful. Its new design mirrors the Echo Dot Max, down to its LED light ring and controls in the center. It adds spatial audio and Dolby Atmos support, which you can link up to other Echo Studio or Echo Dot Max speakers to create a surround sound setup.
New Fire TVs & a new 4K Fire Stick
Welcome to Amazon’s new Fire TV Omni QLED lineup of TVs. The TVs will range from 50 to 75 inches in size and start at $480. The displays are 60% brighter than previous versions, will have an upgraded processor for faster performance, support Dolby Vision and HDR10 Plus, can automatically adjust the display’s color based on the lighting in your room, can display artwork and photos, and can automatically switch off when you leave the room.
Amazon also revealed new budget-friendly 2-Series and 4-Series 4K Fire TV options, which range from 32 to 55-inches and starts at $160. These entry-level TVs sports thinner metal bezels and uses a more powerful quad-core processor for better overall performance over its predecessors. All of the new Fire TVs will have Alexa Plus on board for more functionality.
And its new $40 Fire TV Stick 4K Select touts HDR10 Plus support, better performance thanks to its new Vega OS to replace its aging Fire OS. It will also support Xbox Gaming, Luna, and Alexa Plus.
New Kindle Scribe in color
Meet the latest Kindle Scribes, which are a large 11-inch Kindle e-reader with thin bezels, uses AI to summarize your notes, and includes a stylus for writing and sketches. The base model starts at $430, and a mid-level model with a front light display starts at $500. This year, Amazon built a Scribe with a color display that provides up to two weeks of battery, along with the ability to highlight, draw, and write in a variety of colors. The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft starts at $630 and will arrive later this year.
Ring adds 4K video to its doorbell cameras
The latest Ring cameras are now using larger aperture lenses, 4K video in select models, and a new ‘Retinal Vision’ technology, which uses AI to enhance image quality — especially in low-light. Like every product unveiled today, Alexa Plus is onboard and powering doorbell greetings, Familiar Faces, aka facial recognition (coming in December), and the new Search Party feature (coming in November), which uses nearby Ring cameras to help spot and locate lost dogs in your neighborhood.
The 4K models we mentioned earlier are the $200 Outdoor Cam Pro, $250 Spotlight Cam Pro, $250 Wired Doorbell Pro, and the $280 Floodlight Cam Pro. Also, there’s a $180 Wired Doorbell Plus and a $60 Indoor Cam Plus with 2K video — all of the new Ring cameras are available now for pre-order.
Blink’s newest outdoor camera offers panoramic video footage
Amazon’s new $100 Blink Outdoor 2K+ camera captures 2K video, has a 4x zoom, offers 2-way talk with noise cancellation, color night vision, and Blink Plus subscribers get smart notifications for detecting people and vehicles. For indoors, there’s the new $50 Blink Mini 2K+, which offers the same features as the Outdoor model, but you can also use it outside thanks to its weather-resistant power adapter.
And lastly, there’s Blink’s new $100 Arc camera, which utilizes 2 Blink Mini 2K+ cameras for a 180-degree view and stitches the footage together for a single wide-angle feed. It’s an outdoor camera and uses a weather-resistant power adapter to keep it charged. However, you’ll need a Blink Plus subscription to access the 180-degree view. All of the new Blink cameras will launch in October.
