Amazon's Echo Show 8 offers spatial audio and a dynamic, proximity-based UI
It costs $150 and starts shipping next month.
Amazon debuted an updated Echo Show 8 during its annual fall event on Wednesday, highlighting the device's new display, camera, microphones and spatial-audio capabilities. Generative AI helps the Echo Show 8 respond dynamically to the user's position in the physical world, offering different displays depending on how far away someone is from the screen. A new language model increases the device's on-board Alexa response time by 40 percent over the previous edition.
The Echo Show 8 costs $150 and is available for pre-order now, and will start shipping in October.
In its keynote, Amazon showed off the new display's dynamic UI in a demo involving the weather app — the Echo Show 8 showed a larger font size when the user was far away from the screen, and switched to a more detailed view as they came closer. This is similar to the proximity features Google builds into its Nest Hub devices.
The Echo Show 8's adaptive screen will display personalized content if the user is enrolled in visual ID, populating things like recent playlists or relevant news items upon approach. Proximity-based content will hit the second-generation Echo Show 8 and the new model next month, and will come to other Echo Show devices early next year.
The Echo Show 8 also uses a new large language model that's designed to make interacting with the Alexa assistant feel more conversational. Users won't have to use the wake word over and over again in order to ask the device questions, for instance. It also has an improved, centered, 13-megapixel camera and new background noise-minimization features for better video calls. A built-in smart home hub supports Zigbee, Sidewalk, Thread, Bluetooth and Matter devices.
Additionally, Amazon unveiled the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, which puts your personal pictures front-and-center as the primary view. The photos will change every 30 seconds and the device comes with 25 GB of storage through Amazon Photos. The Echo Show 8 Photos Edition costs $160 and requires a subscription to Amazon's PhotosPlus service, which renews at $2 a month. It's due out in the fall and comes with a six-month PhotosPlus subscription, set to automatically renew.
Amazon unveiled the original, 7-inch Echo Show in 2017 and has rolled out various versions over the years, with the latest notable refreshes landing in 2021. That year, Amazon announced the third-gen Echo Show 10, the second-gen Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8, and the brand-new Echo Show 15, which is designed to be wall-mounted. Amazon did release an updated Echo Show 5 in 2023, offering minimal improvements in processing speed and audio quality, but otherwise leaving the device's design unchanged.
Amazon Echo Show 8 (2023)
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