Amazon has redesigned its Echo Show 10 – its Alexa-enabled smart speaker with a built-in touchscreen to bring additional information. Echo Show is the fastest-growing line of devices available from Amazon, the retail giant has confirmed. So, it makes sense that Amazon has packed a truckload of new features into the gadget.
The headline feature of the new Echo Show 10 is the ability to follow you around the room. As you move around, the touchscreen display will swivel around – so that it’s always in the right position to quickly glance back and check your timers, video call or TV episode from Amazon Prime Video or another streaming service.
Amazon says all of the tracking smarts, which allows the Echo Show 10 to sense your presence and angle its display towards you, runs locally so there shouldn’t be any privacy concerns. According to Amazon, there’s no facial recognition either. Instead Echo Show 10 only knows that someone is present in the room. As you’d expect, you can switch off the motion tracking if you want.
Alexa app users who are away from home can manually take control of the moveable display to peer around the room – to check on the dog, or make sure that everything is exactly as you’ve left it.
Echo Show 10 includes a dramatically upgraded 10-inch touchscreen display. This should make the Echo Show 10 a much better gadget for video – perfect as Amazon has now brought support for Zoom video calls and Netflix to the device.
Elsewhere, Echo Show 10 packs a 13-megapixel front-facing camera for improved video calls and selfies. There’s also a Zigbee hub built-in, so you won’t need to plug any extra hubs into your router as you buy Philips Hue smart bulbs, or any number of other connected home gadgets – the Echo Show 10 handles all of the set-up so all of your new kit should work straight out of the box.
Echo Show 10 starts from $249.99. Amazon hasn’t confirmed the UK price, or release date yet.
Amazon revealed its new Echo Show 10 during its annual September gadget showcase event. The online shopping colossus uses this event to reveal a slew of new devices set to land on its digital shelves over the coming weeks.
As well as new hardware, Amazon often uses its keynote presentation, which was streamed online from its headquarters in Seattle this year due to the ongoing public health crisis, to reveal new software features to its talk-active Alexa voice assistant.
As well as Fire TV, Amazon unveiled a completely redesigned Echo smart speaker with a new spherical design. The new speaker ditches the tall cylindrical design we’ve seen in previous years for a new mesh-covered sphere. The Echo Dot – the smallest and most affordable Alexa smart speaker, which is designed to be hooked-up to an existing sound system or interact with Alexa rather than listening to your favourite albums for hours on end – also benefits from the new spherical design. The Echo Dot With Clock has the same updated design.