Amazon launches new devices along with new Alexa features and a robot

Amazon has brought many of their new devices to our shores in recent years and today they have announced that three of their four new devices will land Downunder with a fourth yet to be determined. Alongside the new devices Amazon has also announced new Alexa features rolling out now.

The four new Amazon devices include the Echo Show 15, Echo Buds, a roaming robot for your home called Astro and the eero Pro 6.

Echo Show 15

Amazon has made some great Echo Show devices over the years and continue to expand their portfolio with the Echo Show 15. The all new Echo Show 15 is designed to be the digital hub of your home with a large 15.6-inch 1080P display, either mounted on a wall or sitting on the bench, in either portrait or landscape mode.

The Echo Show 15 includes Amazon’s AZ2 Neural Edge processor to offer more customisation options along with new personalisation features with visual ID. Customisable widgets are also new, rotating across the display allowing you to customise the home screen to your requirements. These widgets will continually update providing you and your family with updated information throughout the day. Obviously, the larger display is great for content viewing and supports Netflix and Prime Video, along with music and podcast content and the ability to display full-screen images to imitate a hanging picture/painting.

Using the new visual ID feature, Alexa can recognise you and personalise the on-screen information to you showing a greeting for you, your own reminders, calendar events, recently played music or notes from others in your home. For added privacy you can once again use the built-in shutter to cover the camera at any time.

The Echo Show 15 will be available in Australia for $399 in 2022 so keep an eye out for it appearing on the Amazon AU website in the coming months.

Echo Buds

Launching in Australia on October 27, the Echo Buds offer a new design built with premium audio architecture in mind, to deliver a crisp, balanced sound. The Buds also arrive with an improved active noise cancellation, wireless charging capabilities and of course Alexa support.

Compact, lightweight and IPX-4 water resistant the Echo Buds are comfortable to wear due to a compact nozzle design with four ear tip sizes and two wing tip sizes included in the box.

The Echo Buds are premium audio wireless earbuds and will offer up to 15 hours of playback and a 15 minute quick charge function to provide an extra two hours of playback. The carry case supports wireless Qi and USB-C charging in one of the models and just the USB-C charging in the other.

The Echo Buds will be available in Australia from October 27 for $169 for the corded charging pair and $199 for the wireless charging model. For more information head on over to the Amazon webpage.

eero Pro 6

The eero Pro 6 launches in Australia today bringing with it a new mesh Wi-Fi system with support for Wi-Fi 6 and an in-built Zigbee hub. Interoperable with older eero generations, the eero Pro 6 is a tri-band, high-performance mesh Wi-Fi 6 router with two ethernet ports built in. A single eero Pro 6 unit will cover up to 190m2 of your house with three of them (connected either wired or wirelessly) can cover up to 560m2.

With a simple setup the tiny routers fit seamlessly into your home and can act as a Zigbee smart hub for your Zigbee devices, allowing them to all connect into your eero network. Where this lands in the future when CHIP / Matter launch int he coming years is unsure but it’s a great addition to have now.

eero Pro 6 systems are available starting today at www.amazon.com.au/eeroPro6 in addition to retailers including Officeworks and JB Hi-Fi in either 1-pack ($439) or 3-pack ($999) bundles. Customers can also subscribe to eero Secure for $4.99 per month, and eero Secure+ for $15.99 per month.

Astro

Ever wanted a robot to follow you around your house all day, or to creepily patrol your house while you are not home? Then Astro is for you. Although Astro has been announced today it is unsure whether it will ever make it to our shores any time soon.

Astro uses “intelligent motion” to check on your home while you are away and of course bringing Alexa with it to anywhere in your home. Designed to be helpful and be able to provide help wherever you are in your home, Astro includes new AI technologies, computer vision, sensor technology and voice and edge computing.

Keep an eye out for it appearing in Australia next year although my money would be on version 2 landing here in at least a year’s time.

New Alexa Features

New Alexa features introduced today include a new household calendar widget to help you view and manage your household’s schedule. Using either Alexa voice commands, tapping on an Echo Show display, or the new Visual ID a personalised view of the daily events and reminders can be seen.

Another new feature is Sticky Notes, allowing you to create and display digital sticky notes on your Echo Show display and also the ability to assign notes to other members of your household. Look out for these news features showing up on your Echo Show devices today.

We hope to get a look at these devices as they become available in Australia to give you our opinions on them so keep an eye out for that in the coming months.