Amazon has unveiled not one, but three brand-new Echo devices at a special event held at its HQ in Seattle.
The three new gadgets are the new Amazon Echo now at a lower price, the Smart home-controlling Echo Plus and a small quirky Echo Spot which contains a small circular display.
Leading the event is the brand-new Amazon Echo. This sequel to the popular voice-activated speaker now comes with a new design, improved audio and a cheaper price.
According to Amazon the new Echo boasts improved sound quality over the original with sound processing by Dolby. It also comes with Amazon’s second generation far-field microphone technology which should make it even easier to talk to in big or noisy rooms.
Then of course there’s the design. Amazon’s taken a leaf out of Google’s book and like the Google Home, now offers the Echo with a range of different covers.
It costs £89.99, is available to order now and will be released in the UK on the 31 October 2017.
Next up is the Echo Plus. This features the same design as the original Echo but comes with two major improvements.
Firstly, it now has the same audio improvements as the Echo including both a dedicated tweeter and woofer and audio processing by Dolby.
The second feature is arguably the more exciting. Echo Plus is actually a smart home hub, which means that it is compatible with hundreds of smart home products straight out of the box.
You simply tell Echo Plus to discover what’s in your house and it will search for, and then connect to everything that’s compatible without you having to go through each individual product.
For the added convenience and slightly bigger audio Amazon’s charging £139.99 for the Echo Plus and it too will release in the UK on the 31 October.
Last but not least is the Echo Spot. This doesn’t have a UK release date but it’s sure to be a hit in the US.
It’s essentially a tiny version of Amazon’s larger Show speaker, with a small circular display that can show information, requests. It also has a camera that means it can double as a nursery camera.
Finally Amazon announced that the Echo Show would be launching in the UK on the 16 November for £199.99.
With a 7-inch touchscreen display, Echo Show gives you all the functionality of Echo but can also show information like food recipes, song lyrics and weather forecasts.
Amazon will be under increased pressure this Christmas with Google expected to launch a smaller version of its Home smart speaker and Apple’s own Siri-enabled HomePod smart speaker launching in December.