After refreshing the trend-setting
"regular" Echo and expanding its crazy popular family of smart
speakers with a clock-sporting new Echo Dot starting at a very reasonable
price, Amazon just brought out the big guns at its highly anticipated hardware
launch event in Seattle today.
The Echo Show 8 is pretty interesting, further
broadening the company's smart display lineup to give Google's Nest Hub and
Nest Hub Max a run for their money, but the Echo Studio is undoubtedly the star
of the show, going directly for the Apple HomePod's jugular.
This is the oft-rumored and long overdue high-end
speaker with Alexa that also competes against the Google Home Max at a
virtually unbeatable price of US$ 199.99. That's right, two measly Benjamins are
enough to get you the best Amazon can do right now in terms of sound quality.
The Echo Studio is up for pre-order today and its main claim to fame is Dolby
Atmos 3D audio support, which no other smart speaker includes for the time
being.
Amazon is promising "truly immersive
sound" powered by that state-of-the-art technology, as well as an equally
impressive internal design consisting of left, right, and top mid-range
speakers that create directional sound, a directional tweeter, and a built-in
5.25-inch bass driver. Naturally, Amazon plans to push the premium Echo Studio
hard alongside its new Music HD streaming service.
Circling back to the Echo Show 8, you probably won't
be surprised to hear its name is pretty much as self-explanatory as the Echo
Dot with Clock. Basically, you're looking at an Echo that can show you stuff on
an 8-inch HD display, squeezing between the Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 10 as far
as both size and retail pricing are concerned. Up for pre-order today, the Echo
Show 8 costs US$ 129.99, borrowing the "crisp, powerful audio" from the
largest Echo Show variant while also sporting a camera shutter guaranteeing
your privacy.
