echo dot – Product Management Confabulation

September 28, 2022

Amazon debuts new Echo devices, including Echo Studio with spatial audio

During Amazon’s hardware event this morning, the company announced new Alexa-powered Echo devices including new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock models. One of the more notable upgrades is Eero Built-in for Echo Dot, which allows Echo Dot devices to serve as Wi-Fi extenders for existing Eero networks.

The Echo Studio — which now comes in a new color, Glacier White — isn’t getting hardware-level improvements. Instead, an over-the-air upgrade will bring spatial audio processing technology that builds on Amazon’s 3D audio to existing Echo Studio devices, designed to offer greater “width” and clarity than standard stereo audio. (Spatial audio is a feature of the Amazon Music Unlimited service, which costs $8.99 a month.) The smart speaker’s frequency range extension tech, another new addition via forthcoming new software, ostensibly delivers better playback performance by improving the mid-range clarity and deepening the bass.

Image Credits: Amazon

As for the upgraded Echo Dot, which does feature new hardware, it has a redesigned architecture that squeezes a larger speaker into housing that’s the same size as the previous generation — leading to clearer vocals and twice the bass. An enhanced, brighter and higher-resolution display on the Echo Dot with Clock model shows more information, including the time. And new sensors — an accelerometer and temperature sensor — and Amazon’s AZ2 neural edge processor enable things like more tap gesture controls (e.g., tapping the top of the device to pause and restart music, stop a timer or end a call), asking Alexa for the room temperature and triggering temperature-based routines.

The new Echo Dot is also the first to ship with the aforementioned Eero Built-in, which adds up to 1,000 square feet of coverage to an existing Eero wireless network. Fourth-gen Echo Dots including the old Echo Dot with Clock will receive a firmware update that enables this in the coming months, Amazon said.

The improved Echo Dot will be available for $49.99, while the new Echo Dot with Clock will be priced at $59.99. They’re available for pre-order today and will ship next month alongside two new designs for Echo Dot for Kids, Owl and Dragon, both of which will come with a year of Amazon’s kid-focused content service, Amazon Kids+.

Amazon debuts new Echo devices, including Echo Studio with spatial audio by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

July 14, 2021

An Echo Dot designed by Diane von Furstenberg? Yeah, sure, why not

Earlier this year, Amazon launched Build It, a fun little program that lets customers preorder concept devices. Think about it like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, where the company will only actually make the product if enough people buy-in via preorder. Obviously Amazon has a significantly larger ability to absorb a misstep than your average first-time hardware startup, but I digress.

This latest round isn’t particularly experimental as far as these things go. The company partnered with fashion mogul Diane von Furstenberg to create new coverings for its popular entry-level smart speaker. The Echo Dot x Diane von Furstenberg is being offered up in three varieties: Midnight Kiss, Ikat or Twigs. It’s not exactly thew new product entries we saw the first time out, which included a sticky note printer, smart scale and Alexa cuckoo clock.

Image Credits: Amazon

Each runs $59 — the price of the Echo Dot with clock and $10 more than the standard Dot. The product looks to otherwise be the same as the latest gen Echo Dot. The company says it will be donating to Vital Voices, a charity chosen by the designer — though it wouldn’t specify how much when we asked.

Amazon Echo Dot with Clock review: A mostly aesthetic update

Preorders open now and close August 13. If the designs don’t hit their goal, customers won’t be charged. Once they’re live, “a select number of successful prints may be available at full price after the campaign closes, while supplies last,” according to Amazon.

[gallery ids="2177362,2177364,2177365,2177366,2177367,2177368,2177369,2177370"]

Amazon will let users vote on new Alexa devices with pre-orders, including a cuckoo clock

Amazon’s newest product lets companies build their own Alexa assistant for cars, apps and video games

October 19, 2020

Amazon Echo Dot with Clock review: A mostly aesthetic update

It’s been a busy few weeks for smart speakers. Amazon kicked things off in late September with newer, rounder versions of both the Echo and Echo Dot. Less than a week later, Google updated the Home, after four years, with the rebranded Nest Audio. And then, last week, Apple unveiled the long-awaited $99 HomePod Mini, finally delivering an affordable version of its Siri speaker.

Amazon, for its part, has easily offered the most regular refreshes of the three. Both the Echo and Echo Dot are currently on their fourth iterations. The Echo Dot with Clock is only on its second (having just been introduced), but for all intents and purposes, the device is basically an Echo Dot — but, you know, with a clock.

Amazon redesigns Echo Dot as a sphere, adds animal designs and reading feature for Kids Edition

The latest update to the line finds the company offering a kind of design uniformity across the smart speakers. The Dot really does look like a diminutive version of the standard Echo. I wasn’t entirely sure how large a difference there would be between the two products, but it’s definitely pronounced. The Echo is the size of a large grapefruit and the Dot is essentially the size of a softball.

The Dot’s size lends it a good deal more flexibility in terms of placement. I could definitely see placing them in nooks and crannies throughout my place to create a kind of makeshift sound system (though the in-box cable is on the short side, so you’ll likely need an extension if you’re not close to an outlet).

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The majority of the speaker is covered in fabric, though the hard plastic bottom arcs up on the back of the device, occupying a large portion of the back. This allows for the inclusion of two ports (power and auxiliary audio out), though it also limits the speaker surface area on the device, restricting a full 360 approach unlike the older hockey puck design. As such, the speaker is just front-facing, in spite of the round design.

The new Echo devices, it’s worth noting, are one in a growing number of devices from big companies that are included as part of a push toward climate consciousness. I won’t really address Amazon’s larger overall carbon footprint here, but it’s nice to see some of that trickling down into these products. According to the company, the plastics are 50% post-consumer recycled, while the fabric and aluminum (including the capable and adapter) are both 100%.

Amazon Echo Dot 3 review

The setup process is as simple as ever. Tap a couple of buttons on the connected Echo app and you should be up and running. The status light ring has been moved to the bottom of the device — that seems to be more of a practical choice than anything. After all, the standard light ring wouldn’t really work at the top of a round, fabric-covered device.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

Whether that’s a net positive kind of depends on where you put the Echo. If it’s around eye-level, great. If it’s below that, it moves the ring out of view, and you may have to rely on seeing how it reflects off the surface it’s sitting on. For my own use, it’s a small step in the wrong direction. The digital clock (the big differentiator between the two Dots) is also a bit low on the ball, leaving a lot of blank surface area up top.

Again, I think Amazon is anticipating people will stick it around eye level, which is certainly the case if you primarily use the clock while lying in bed. The clock itself is plenty bright. And honestly, it’s nice just having a simple digital display sometimes, versus a full-on smart screen. That’s especially the case if you plan to stick it near your bed. That, after all, is supposed to be a kind of refuge from screens. That’s doubly important these days when we’re seemingly never not in front of one.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

That said, the uses for the face are pretty much limited. You get a “Hello” at launch, the time (naturally), the weather when prompted and the volume level. That last bit can be adjusted with voice or with a pair of physical buttons up top. Those are joined by the Alexa button, which fires up the assistant and the always-important microphone off. That turns red when you tap it, along with a red ring on the bottom of the device to let you known the speaker has stopped listening until it’s reenabled.

The sound quality is basically the same — which is to say, kind of what you’d expect from a $50 to $60 smart speaker. It’s good for all of the voice functionality you need, but I certainly wouldn’t rely on it as my default home speaker — even with a couple of them paired up. As an alarm clock, however, sure, go for it. It certainly beats the speaker on your phone.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

The $10 price difference between the Dot and Dot with Clock is a bit of a weird one. I’d anticipate in future generations, Amazon will just combine them into one product, priced the same as the standard Dot. For now, however, telling time at a glance is going to cost you a little extra.

The new Echo arrives October 22. The Dot with Clock won’t be available until November 5.

September 24, 2020

Amazon redesigns Echo Dot as a sphere, adds animal designs and reading feature for Kids Edition

Amazon today introduced a redesign of its best-selling smart speaker, the Echo Dot. The company is bringing a new spherical design to the Echo Dot, Echo Dot with Clock and a new Echo Dot Kids Edition — the latter which now features colorful animal character designs. Instead of a flatter, hockey puck-shaped device that can better be hidden on shelves, the updated Dot designs mean consumers will have to think more about where they’re placed in the room.

The Dot and Dot with Clock will come in Charcoal, Glacier White, and Twilight Blue colors. The Kids Edition will now be available with either a tiger or panda design to also make them feel more like room décor.

The devices will also include a 1.6-inch, front-firing speaker, producing crisp vocals and balanced bass for full sound, Amazon claims.

The actual functionality provided by the new Dot hasn’t changed as much. It still offers access to the Alexa smart assistant, music, skills, news, reminders, lists, alarms and more.

Kids Edition devices also come with kid-friendly responses, and allow kids to listen thousands of Audible books from brands like Disney, Nickelodeon, and National Geographic, among others.

Another new Alexa feature, Reading Sidekick, has been designed to complement kids’ reading routines, and helps them build fluency.

When this launches, Alexa will take turns reading from a supported book with the child then listen for quality of reading. It will offer encouragement when the child is reading well and support when the child struggles, Amazon says. Reading Sidekick at launch will work with hundreds of children’s books and will be available in preview for Amazon Kids+ families in the months ahead.

In another move to cater to parents, Amazon says the Amazon Kids parental controls will be expanded to work all over the house, not just on their Echo Dot Kids Edition. Plus, parents will be able to create an Alexa voice profile for their kids.

Once enabled, Alexa will shift to the Kids Alexa experience whenever it recognizes the child’s voice—on any device in the household—and then provide kid-friendly responses, games, skills, music, and more. Those families who subscribe to Amazon Kids+ will have access to all the kids’ favorite premium skills and Audible books, as part of that catalog.

A preview of Alexa voice profiles for kids will begin rolling out for Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+ families in the coming months.

Echo Dot Kids Edition will be available for pre-order today for only $59.99 and will ship later this year.

The Echo Dot will be available for pre-order today for $49.99 and will ship later this year. The Echo Dot with clock option will cost $59.99.

September 25, 2019

Amazon’s new Echo Dot With Clock is a new Echo Dot that has a clock

Today’s deluge of Amazon hardware kicked off with a new addition to the Echo Dot line, the Echo Dot With Clock. That’s it. That’s the name. It is, as advertised, an Echo dot with a digital alarm clock built into the front, next to the speaker grille.

The new version of Amazon’s insanely popular entry level smart speaker doesn’t replace the current Dot, but will instead exist along side it in the company’s current Echo lineup. It’s available for pre-order starting today, priced at an extremely reasonable $59 — that’s $10 more than the standard Dot.

Like the Echo Spot and Echo Show 5, the Echo Dot With Clock seems well suited to serve as a bedside alarm clock. Though, honestly, the lack of a display and camera could make it even more appealing for that purpose, given the laundry list of privacy concerns the company laid out at the top of the event.

The addition of a built-in clock also gives the product added utility beyond serving as a smart speaker. It’s a clever touch and Amazon’s bound to sell a ton of the things.

July 17, 2019

Amazon sells over 175M items during Prime Day 2019, more than Black Friday & Cyber Monday combined

Amid worker protests and antitrust investigations, Amazon’s Prime Day sales event carried on as usual — and that means it again set new records for the online retailer. This time, Amazon says Prime Day 2019 was bigger than both Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, as Prime members purchased more than 175 million items during the event.

While last year’s Prime Day 2018 became the biggest sales day in Amazon history, it’s getting harder to directly compare one Prime Day sale with another, because Amazon keeps stretching them out.

Prime Day 2019, for example, was a full 48-hour sale, up from 36 hours last year and 30 hours the year before.

What we are able to tell, however, is that people will continue to shop as long as there are bargains being offered. During Prime Day 2018’s 36-hour sale, Prime members bought 100 million items. During this year’s 48-hour sale, members purchased over 175 million items. (Neither calculation includes Whole Foods sales.)

Amazon has also succeeded in making Prime Day bigger than its Black Friday online sales, thanks to its deep discounts — often at cost or below — on its own hardware devices, like the popular Echo speakers or Fire TV.

This year’s two-day sale was larger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 sales put together, Amazon says.

The retailer also notes that Prime Day was the biggest sales event for Amazon devices. Again, the top-sellers worldwide continued to be the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, and the Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote. The Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick were top-selling devices yesterday, and it’s not surprising to see them again win this title as they have for several years in a row.

The Echo Dot, in particular, hit its lowest-ever price point of $22 and was bundled in with some other Alexa device deals, almost as a giveaway.

“We want to thank Prime members all around the world,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in a statement. “Members purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, received tens of millions of dollars in savings by shopping from Whole Foods Market and bought more than $2 billion of products from independent small and medium-sized businesses. Huge thank you to Amazonians everywhere who made this day possible for customers.”

In addition, Amazon claims a record number of U.S. Prime members shopped the site during Prime Day. But given the sale length and the growth in membership — there are now over 100 million worldwide members — this is not the most difficult milestone to achieve.

In the U.S., Prime member bought more than 100,000 lunchboxes, 100,000 laptops, 200,000 TVs, 300,000 headphones, 350,000 luxury beauty products, 400,000 pet products, 650,000 household cleaning supplies, and more than one million toys, says Amazon. They also bought over 200,000 LifeStraw Personal Water Filters and 150,000 Crest 3D White Professional Effects Whitestrips Kits, and saved “tens of millions” by shopping Amazon-owned Whole Foods.

Other top sellers in the U.S. included the Instant Pot DUO60 and 23andMe Health + Ancestry kits.

Amazon also sold millions of smart home devices, including iRobot Roomba 690 Robot Vacuum, MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener Chamberlain MYQ-G0301, and Amazon Smart Plug. It doubled the sales of the Ring and Blink devices, as well as Fire TV Edition TVs, versus last year, when comparing a two-day period. It sold 6x the number of eero devices compared with any other prior sale. And it sold more than ever Fire tablets, Kindle devices, and Alexa with screens (Echo Show and Echo Show 5.)

The largest and most important aspect to Prime Day is not ultimately the sales themselves, but the Prime memberships. This locks in consumers to Amazon’s e-commerce ecosystem for a year, and gives Amazon a chance to win their loyalty when it comes time to resubscribe.

This year, Prime Day’s effect on new subscriptions also improved, with Amazon signing up more new Prime members on July 15 than on any other day ever, and July 16 nearly hit that milestone as well.

In total, Amazon says Prime members worldwide saved over a billion dollars on purchases, and millions of items shipped in one day or faster.

July 16, 2019

Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick are again Prime Day’s best selling devices

Amazon Prime members again snapped up loss leaders like the Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Remote on the first day of Amazon Prime Day 2019, which has now been stretched out to a 48-hour sale. This is the third year in a row that the entry-level Alexa smart speaker, the Echo Dot, has been a Prime Day bestseller. The Fire TV Stick was a top seller last year, too, and sold well in years past — including in 2016, when it emerged at the overall best-selling device globally on Prime Day.

Amazon never provides hard numbers on Prime Day sales, but claims “millions” of these devices — the Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick combined — were sold on Monday to customers worldwide during the first day of Prime Day 2019.

Last year, Amazon claimed customers bought “millions” of Fire TV Stick devices alone, for comparison’s sake.

The retailer also said this morning that U.S. shoppers saved “millions” on Prime Day sales on Monday. This includes other bestsellers like the Instant Pot DUO Plus 60 6 Qt, LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, and Crest 3D White Professional Effects Whitening Strips. The Instant Pot and LifeStraw filter were also two of the non-Amazon top sellers last Prime Day, which says something about the consistency of this sales event as it enters its fifth year.

Though Amazon didn’t officially list the Echo Dot in its round-up of July 15 Prime Day sales, the smart speaker had already been discounted to its then lowest price ever of $24.99 (half off list) before Prime Day even started. As the event kicked off, it dropped again to $22.

echo show 5

Today, Amazon is keeping the Echo Dot at $22 but is sold out of Charcoal, leaving only the lighter sandstone color available for purchase.

Other notable Day 2 Prime Day deals include:

A $49.99 Echo Show 5 (the smaller, more compact revamp of the Alexa speaker with a screen); savings of up to $140 on Fire TV Edition smart TVs; the $14.99 Fire TV Stick with Alexa Remote; a $59.99 Fire 7 Kids Edition tablet (or 2 for $99.98); and the $139 Ring Video Doorbell 2.

A list of the announced Prime Day, day 2 deals are below:

Amazon Devices:

$27.99 off Echo Dot, $22
$40 off the all-new Echo Show 5, $49.99
$25 off Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, $14.99
Save up to $140 on Fire TV Edition Smart TVs
$20 off the all-new Fire 7 tablet, just $29.99, or get two for $49.98—a $50 savings
$40 off all-new Fire 7 Kids Edition tablet, just $59.99, or get two for $99.98—a $100 savings
$60 off Ring Video Doorbell 2, $139
Save up to $200 on eero WiFi systems
Save up to $50 on Kindle Paperwhite, plus get a $5 eBook credit and three months free Kindle Unlimited

Amazon Brands and Exclusives:

Save up to 50% on kids and baby styles from Simple Joys by Carter’s, LOOK by crewcuts, Spotted Zebra, and Amazon Essentials
Save up to 30% on furniture and décor from Rivet, Stone & Beam, and Ravenna Home

Electronics:

Save up to 25% on select Canon Mirrorless and DSLR cameras
Save up to 30% of select Sony and Samsung TVs

Apparel:

Save up to 40% off Ray-Ban sunglasses
Up to 50% off Dockers clothing and more
Deep discounts on Champion hoodies and Herschel Little America backpacks

Smart Home:

Save up to 50% off select Sony LED Smart TVs
Save up to 30% on Tile
Save up to 30% on iRobot Robotic Vacuums

Home, Kitchen & Furniture:

Save up to 30% on Blue Pure Air Purifier
Save on select Winix Air Purifiers
Save on Hoover ONEPWR vacuums
Save on Philips XXL Air Fryer
Save 30% on Keurig K-Café Single-Serve Coffee Maker
Save 30% on Crock Pot 6qt Slow Cooker
Save up to 30% on Brother Sewing Machines
Save on Philips Smoke-less Indoor BBQ Grill
Save up to 35% on Dash Egg Cookers

Toys & Games:

Save 30% on games from What Do You Meme?
Save up to 40% on select toys and games including favorites from LEGO and Melissa & Doug

Video Games:

Save up to 50% on Astro A40 TR headset

Tools & Home Improvement:

Save up to 30% on CRAFTSMAN power tools

Lawn & Garden:

Save up to 35% on Greenworks yard equipment

Sports & Outdoors:

Save up to 20% on Skywalker 15’ Jump and Dunk trampolines
Save 20% on Bushnell Trophy trail camera
Save 20% on Marvel Spiderman kids bikes

Automotive:

Save up to 30% on Pennzoil Motor Oil
Save up to 30% on NOCO Jump Starters and Battery Chargers