Today's 4 Biggest Amazon Smart Home Announcements

ZDNET’s key takeaways

Amazon has just announced five new smart home devices for its lineup.
There are new categories: the $230 Alexa Photo Frame and the $200 Echo Time.
And the new Alexa Home Map creates 3D maps of your home and interior.

Amazon today announced several new smart home devices, including two entirely new device categories: the $200 Echo Time smart alarm clock and the $230 Alexa Photo Frame. Both are available now, along with an upgraded Echo Dot for $100 and a new Echo Studio with a built-in home camera for $250.

Also: Amazon’s new Echo Dot can turn into a Wi-Fi extender – how it works

The company’s smart home lineup also now includes a redesigned $500 Echo Show 16, which is available for pre-order, with devices shipping in mid-December. Finally, Amazon announced the Alexa Home Map, which allows you to create a 3D interactive map of your home and interior.

1. Echo Time combines a smart alarm clock and home hub

The Amazon Echo Time is a new bedside companion and a definite upgrade over the Echo Spot. It’s a rounded speaker with a display and no camera, designed to be the smartest combination of alarm clock and hub.

Also: Amazon’s new Echo Studio gives Alexa + an AI camera to see in your home

The Echo Time doubles as a smart home hub, as it supports Zigbee and Matter and acts as a thread border router. It costs $200, so it’s a definite price increase compared to the Echo Spot, but it’s also a more capable speaker with hub capabilities.

2. Alexa Photo Frame displays photos and records voice notes

The Amazon Alexa Photo Frame is another first for Amazon, and arrives just in time for the holidays. The photo frame consists of a 10.1-inch matte display with Alexa + built-in, made to scroll through your own collection of photos. It also allows you to search for specific photos by voice, as well as record voice notes associated with individual photos.

Amazon

The Alexa Photo Frame comes in three frame finishes, including birch, walnut and black, so it can match your home decor. It costs $230 and is already available.

3. Echo Show 16, Echo Dot, and Echo Studio are getting upgrades

Amazon also announced some big upgrades coming to the Echo lineup. They include a redesigned Echo Show 16, a new Echo Dot, and an updated Echo Studio with Home Camera.

Amazon Echo Show 16: Completely redesigned from the inside out, the Echo Show 16 has rounded edges, a 16-inch display, a slim tablet-like construction and an updated 13-megapixel camera. The Echo Show 16 is available for pre-order at $500, with devices shipping in mid-December.
Amazon Echo Dot (6th Gen): A fan favorite among Alexa users, the Echo Dot is a compact speaker that’s getting its first major upgrade since 2022. Powered by Alexa+, the Echo Dot offers bright, full sound and acts as a smart home hub, with support for Zigbee, Matter, Thread, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
Amazon Echo Studio with home camera: The new Echo Studio aims for room-filling sound with automatic room adaptation and a camera that supports adaptive volume, so it adjusts based on where you are in the room. The 13-megapixel camera also lets you keep an eye on your pets and home when you’re out and about and “show” Alexa+ items to discuss using the bot’s visual intelligence. It is not “always-on”, but instead needs to be called up, with visual lighting effects on the front to indicate that the camera is on.

4. Alexa Home Map creates a 3D view of your home and devices

The new Alexa Home Map lets you create a 3D interactive map of your home inside and out, allowing you to navigate floors, zoom into rooms and see the locations of all your devices while controlling them in real time.

The concept is not a new idea for Amazon, but the Alexa Home Map enhances the experience offered by the Amazon Alexa App Map View feature, which we covered three years ago at launch. Map View lets you create a basic layout of the rooms in your home to place and tap device icons.

Unlike Map View, which focuses on indoor smart devices within four walls, the new Alexa Home Map offers a 360-degree aerial view of your property. It uses your Ring cameras to generate animations of people and cars moving around your yard and uses the controversial Familiar Faces feature to let you know who has been spotted.

The Familiar Faces feature uses AI-powered facial recognition to identify individuals and save their faces so the device recognizes them when they return, raising questions about consent and privacy. It is the subject of at least one lawsuit.

Also: Alexa Tablet 12 Pro review: Forget everything you knew about Amazon tablets

You create the 3D interactive map of your home by using a compatible smartphone with a lidar feature to scan each room and then put them together. You can then place Alexa-compatible smart home devices in any room and interact with them in real time, such as turning on the light or turning down the volume on a speaker.

For the exterior of your home, enter your address, and the app will generate an Alexa Home Map of your residence using existing map data.

Alexa Home Map Security and Privacy Concerns

With integrations with compatible Alexa devices, including Echo devices, Ring and Blink cameras, Fire TV devices, and other “Works with Alexa” smart home devices, your home security will improve, Amazon says. But it also opens the door to a lot more surveillance of your home, both by potential bad actors and Amazon itself.

Amazon claims that the Alexa Home Map dynamically updates in real time, collecting data from your smart devices in and around your home. As a result, it can show the color of your smart twinkle lights during the holidays, as well as animations of people and cars moving around your property.

While having an interactive map of your devices is certainly a great convenience for many smart home users, the question arises as to whether so much information is available to an outsider. Aggregating your home’s layout, smart devices, and security devices into a 3D interface presents its own share of privacy concerns, including exposing users to account takeovers and invasive data breaches.

A vulnerability in a single third-party smart device could theoretically be used to pivot deeper into your home network or manipulate the map interface, not to mention that the data in this 3D map contains sensitive and private behavior patterns, such as when the family leaves the house or when the children return.

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ZDNET has contacted a cybersecurity expert for comment on the matter.

Maria Diaz is a staff writer with a passion for home automation, smart home devices, and tablets. With a background in graphic design, photography and filmmaking, she has a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and experience in journalism and film.

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Today’s 4 Biggest Amazon Smart Home Announcements