And Echo Present 8 makes three! Amazon now has three sensible residence hubs, with the Echo Show 8 (third-gen) becoming a member of the newly introduced Echo Hub and present fourth-gen Echo smart speaker in sporting each Thread and Zigbee connectivity. These wi-fi radios, together with Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, and Sidewalk, imply the brand new Present 8 can be utilized to arrange and management virtually any sensible residence gadget (sorry, Z-Wave).
This additionally rounds out Amazon’s Echo choices that absolutely assist the new smart home standard Matter (over each Thread and Wi-Fi) fairly properly, though one at a cheaper price level than $100 can be good.
The third-gen Echo Present 8 ($149.99) additionally has Amazon’s latest AZ2 processor, which makes it 40 % sooner, Amazon’s Dave Limp mentioned on the fall {hardware} occasion this week. And it definitely felt snappier in my minute or so of enjoying with it within the demo room at Amazon’s new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.
The sensible show additionally sports activities a brand new look, with edge-to-edge glass and a extra bulbous rear speaker that guarantees higher audio. It’s getting spatial audio processing know-how to spice up its music capabilities, which can be just like the Echo Studio’s sound capabilities, Heather Zorn, VP of Alexa, instructed me.
New room adaption tech additionally “senses the acoustics of the room and fine-tunes playback for optimum sound,” in keeping with Amazon’s blog post. Nonetheless, we weren’t capable of put this to any take a look at within the demo room.
The digicam (nonetheless 13 megapixels) has been relocated to the center (why did it take so lengthy?), which ought to make it extra usable for Zoom calls, one thing the present model does comparatively nicely for a wise show. The digicam additionally allows a neat new characteristic referred to as Adaptive Content material, which modifications the way it shows content material based mostly on how shut you might be. This could make it a greater glanceable show and simpler as a contact display, because it presents a extra touch-friendly UI as you stand up shut.
New quick-access buttons on the house display will assist with this, too. They’re like mini variations of the Echo Present 15’s widgets, citing the climate, and different data with one faucet. The widgets didn’t appear to be absolutely optimized for the show but, although, trying a bit like iPhone apps on an iPad display.