During an event overnight, Amazon unveiled their latest hardware offerings for the next year, with new Kindle, Echo, FireTV devices and more, including new cameras from Ring. 

Kindle Scribe

Kicking off the evening was the all-new Kindle Scribe, a Kindle that allows you to both read and write on the display. 

At just 5.8mm thin, the new Kindle Scribe remains thin and light with USB-C charging powering offering ‘months of battery life’. What the new Kindle Scribe incorporates is a front-lit, 300ppi e-Ink display that works with an included stylus that lets you write on the display. This means adding notations to your favourite books, writing a journal, or even reviewing documents on the go, with various templates on offer if needed. 

Amazon says that the pen and display have been engineered to ‘replicate the feel and flow of pen on paper’ creating a natural and comfortable writing experience. 

The Pen included with the Scribe will be offered in both a basic and Premium options – both of which will attach magnetically to the side of the Kindle Scribe. Both will include support for writing in various thicknesses, as well as highlighter and eraser tools, with the Premium pen offering a dedicated eraser on top as well as customisable shortcut button. 

The notes created with the pen will be stored online with your Kindle library. Amazon is also gearing up to let you import docs from your phone or PC and from early next year, you’ll be able to send documents to Kindle Scribe directly from MS Word. 

Kindle Scribe is available to pre-order now for $549 from www.amazon.com.au/kindlescribe with orders due to start shipping on November 30th.

Halo Rise

If getting up in the morning, or getting enough sleep is an issue, the new Halo Rise from Amazon may be just up your alley. It’s a new ‘Bedside Sleep Tracker’ featuring built-in ambient alarm clock with sleep tracking.

Built with your privacy in mind, the tracker doesn’t include any cameras or microphones and Amazon allows you to download or delete your data at any time. The Halo Rise instead uses contactless, low-energy sensor technology and machine learning to track the sleep of the person in bed closest to it, ignoring any sleeping partners or pets also in the bed.

Halo Rise will supply a detailed sleep summary when you wake, showing ‘a graph

showing time spent in each sleep phase—REM, light, and deep sleep—along with a sleep score and information about your sleep environment’ – which will include temperature and humidity, as well as light intensity information, all factors that can affect your sleep.

The device will also wake you using AI to determine where you are in your sleep cycle, to wake you at the best possible time. It also makes use of the built-in light, which will simulate the colours and gradual brightening of a sunrise to create a ‘gentle wake experience’ – or you can just get woken up by Alexa with built-in support for Amazon Music as well. 

No dates have been given for the Halo Rise, so it’s not clear if this one will make it to Australia for launch, but we’re keeping an eye on them.

Echo – Echo Studio, Echo Dot (plus clock) and Auto

Amazon is also updating their Alexa original speakers, with new Echo Dot & Echo Dot with Clock, as well as an all-new Echo Studio and Echo Auto for the car. They’re also expanding their Eero everywhere, making the new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with clock Eero Mesh Wifi extenders.

Echo Studio

The new Echo Studio doesn’t look any different to the original, but it’s been improved over the last model with spatial audio processing, enhancing stereo sound. The new Echo Studio offers better performance with improved mid-range clarity and bass:

The new Echo Studio will also be shipping in a new Glacier White colour option, adding to the existing Charcoal model. 

The All-New Echo Studio will go on-sale in Australia from November 17th for $329, you can pre-order from the Amazon website now.

Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock

The 5th generation Echo Dot and Echo Dot with clock have also kept their same spherical design, with the addition of internal improvements including improved sound and sensors. 

The next generation Echo Dot and Echo Dot Clock includes better audio offering clearer vocals and up to twice the bass with distortion reduced up to 50%, all in the same compact size.

Amazon has also added an accelerometer and temperature sensors, allowing you to now simply tap the top of the device to play or pause music, or use the on-board temperature sensor to find out the temperature or tie it into Alexa to turn on a fan automatically with a routine. 

The Echo Dot with Clock also gets some improvements with high-density dot technology allowing you to now ‘view the name of a song title or artist, the weather, a calculation or unit of measurement, calendar event times, and more features when you ask Alexa for information.’

The new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock will also feature an expansion of ‘Eero Built-in’ for those Eero Mesh Wifi users, with the new 5th Gen Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock able to act as wifi extenders, improving your Eero Mesh Wifi coverage in your house. 

Amazon says this can add up to ‘1,000 square feet of coverage to your existing eero mesh wifi network’

It’s a feature that will also roll out to the 4th Gen Echo through a software update that will roll out from October 20th. 

You can get your hands on the new Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Echo Dot with Clock from October 20th. You can pre-order the Amazon Echo Dot priced at $79 and available in Charcoal, Deep Sea Blue and Glacier White. The Echo Dot with Clock is also available to pre-order now and is set to land on October 20th, but will be priced at $99 and is available in Cloud Blue and Glacier White. You can pre-order the Echo

Echo Auto

Amazon is also updating their Alexa for the car, also known as Echo Auto, with the new, smaller and re-designed model.

The new Echo Auto is now more compact, making it easier to place in your car. The new design uses fabric covering to bring it more into the same style as other Echo devices in the range. 

Featuring five in-built microphones to ensure your voice can be heard over any music playing, the air-conditioning or road noise, the Echo Auto can respond to commands including playing music, setting alarms, making calls – or if you run into trouble – summon aid through roadside assistance, though Amazon wasn’t clear on if this would extend to local Australian roadside assistance and didn’t release any local launch info or pricing, so it’s likely there won’t be support.

Fire TV Cube and Voice Remote Pro

Fire TV Cube

Amazon has also unveiled their all-new FireTV Cube. The third generation Fire TV Cube offers a new faster octa-core processor making the Cube twice as powerful as the Fire TV Stick Max 4K. The additional processing power is used for many things, including upscaling content with their Super Resolution Upscaling.

The 3rd gen Fire TV Cube offers support for 4K Ultra HD movies, as well as Dolby Vision and HDR, as well as immersive Dolby Atmos audio. There’s now a HDMI input on the back, letting you connect and control your devices including games console or webcam, as well as support for Wifi6E to maintain a great connection for streaming video.

Amazon has also built-in Alexa support so you can control your Fire TV Cube hands-free.

You can pre-order the Amazon Fire TV Cube now for $219, with the unit starting shipping on October 27th.

Alexa Voice Remote Pro

Also announced for Australia, and the rest of the world, was the new Alexa Voice Remote, a premium remote control designed so that you spend less time searching for the remote and more time streaming. In order to do this, the remote has a ‘Remoite Finder’ feature that you can activate with any Alexa enabled device – Handy.

The remote is compatible with most recent Fire TV streaming media players, so you can give your older model (not 1st or 2nd gen FireTV) a bit of a boost.

The remote includes two shortcut buttons on the remote which are customisable, letting you assign buttons to a routine, or even for launching a favourite app.

The new remote also includes motion-activated backlighting on the buttons, to make them easier to see in low-light.

You can pre-order the Alexa Voice Remote Pro from Amazon from today for $59, with delivery set to start from November 17th.

Ring Cameras

During the show, Amazon also showed off new Ring devices including the Spotlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Plus, both new re-designs of their awesome Spotlight Cam.

Spotlight Cam Pro

The new Spotlight Cam Pro adds a new level of pro-tier security camera to their already stacked line-up. 

The new Spotlight Cam Pro adds in a number of new features including 3D motion detection powered by radar, giving you an option for 3D mapping which lets you enable great options like notifications when a delivery driver arrives – but not when a pet runs past. You also get colour pre-roll, and Bird’s Eye View, giving customers an aerial map view of motion events in front of your doorbell. 

The new Spotlight Cam Pro is also supporting solar, letting you set the device up with either battery and plug-in options, or with a solar panel. 

Ring says the Spotlight Cam Pro will go on-sale at the end of October, with battery and Plug-in options starting from $329, while the Solar model will start from $359 – you can check all the options out on the Ring website.

Spotlight Cam Plus

Ring is also updating their Spotlight Cam with a Plus model, offering all the same great features including Two-Way Talk, Colour Night Vision, Live View, and a security siren – but in a fresh new body with a sleeker design. 

The new Spotlight Cam Plus will be available in Solar, Battery or Plug-in options from $289, or $319 with Solar Panel. You can also check out the new Spotlight Cam Plus on the Ring website.