Amazon’s 2020 hardware event: all of the news and announcements

On Thursday, Ring, the home security subsidiary of Amazon, released a new dashcam embedded with a novel feature called “Traffic Stop” that could help bring more accountability to policing. That could be a powerful thing, especially as tens of millions of people have poured onto the streets in cities across the country to demonstrate against systemic racism, white supremacy, and police brutality. It could also be a privacy nightmare.

The Ring Car Cam, which will cost $199, has two cameras: one pointed out the front windshield and one that points toward the car’s interior. The camera can send alerts whenever an event such as a break-in, towing, or accident is detected, and owners can tap into the cameras’ feeds to see what’s happening. The Car Cam relies on either Wi-Fi or LTE for connectivity.

“I’d be more worried about the camera on your phone than I would be about a drone,” Amazon devices SVP Dave Limp told me in an interview a few hours after yesterday’s big Echo event. The drone in question is the Ring Always Home Cam, an autonomous indoor drone that can use a map of your home to independently fly around to check out strange noises or run a patrol when you’re not home.

The drone was just one of well over a dozen product announcements Amazon made yesterday — including a full-on game streaming service to compete directly with Microsoft and Google. But everybody’s visceral reaction to the idea of an Amazon-powered drone flitting its camera about your house is what will be remembered.

Amazon has just taken the wraps off its long-rumored Amazon Luna, meaning the company is officially jumping into the cloud gaming ring — one that has become increasingly crowded over the past year. Google launched Stadia last November, Nvidia’s GeForce Now left beta in February, and Microsoft’s cloud gaming offering (formerly known as xCloud) is included with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription as of September 15th, though it only works with Android right now.

The race is on to see which (if any) of those cloud gaming services takes off with customers, and each company is tackling cloud gaming in a slightly different way. If you’re trying to better understand each service, we’ve put together this guide for you.

You might be wondering: “Did Amazon just break Apple’s App Store guidelines by bringing a cloud gaming service to iPhone?” And I can understand why, given that I told you just last week how Apple doesn’t permit Google Stadia in anything close to its current form, and Amazon’s just-announced Luna is a lot like Stadia. Wouldn’t the same rules apply?

But the truth is that Amazon has a simple way to get around Apple’s App Store rules entirely — and it’s making me wonder how long it’ll be before Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and others follow suit.

Amazon unveiled a radically redesigned $49.99 fourth-generation Echo Dot smart speaker today that doesn’t look like a dot at all — instead, the new Dot is shaped like a ball, or maybe an orb. The new design is a notable departure from the look of previous Echo Dots, which were short, puck-like cylinders that could be said to resemble, well, dots.

If you just can’t get on board with having a ball-shaped smart speaker but are in the market for a new Dot, I have good news for you: Amazon is still selling that dot-shaped third-generation Echo Dot. Amazon confirmed to The Verge that it’s keeping the older Dot in its lineup in part to provide an option for those who want to mount their Dot to a wall. An Echo Flex, a small Echo speaker that plugs right into a wall outlet, is another option.

Amazon revealed its new cloud gaming service, officially called Luna, at its annual Alexa hardware event today. That makes it an immediate competitor to Google’s Stadia, Microsoft’s xCloud, Sony’s PlayStation Now, and a number of other services from major game publishers all eager to try the code on how to stream video games over the internet.

But in a revealing interview with Protocol published after the event, Amazon’s Marc Whitten, the company’s vice president of entertainment devices and services, clarified one of the most vital questions around Luna that wasn’t answered during the reveal: what’s the business model? And from what we can glean from the interview, it’s looking a whole lot like the cable of video games, for better and for worse.

Amazon announced a load of new devices today at its hardware event, as expected. The new Echo Show 10 smart display, shown above, that can follow your movements around the room and Ring’s new Always Home Cam drone are just a sampling. And now, we found out when you can buy them and how much they’ll cost. We’ll be reviewing most, if not all, of these products before they make their way onto store shelves, but if you want to place an order ahead of time, here are the links. Best Buy is also offering preorders for these products.

If Amazon’s Prime Day 2020 goes on in mid-October, as is rumored, it’s possible that we’ll see a few of these products at a lower price. Not all of them will have released by then, but it’s good to at least keep in mind.

Amazon just wrapped up its fall hardware event, and it was packed with a number of big announcements. There are a number of new Echo devices, such as a spherical redesign of the tried-and-true Echo. Amazon also showed off improvements for Alexa, including new security features. We saw a bunch of new Ring devices — one of which was a drone that can autonomously fly around inside your home. And Amazon finally took the wraps off its long-rumored cloud gaming service, Luna.

If you want the play-by-play, check out our live blog with commentary from Dieter Bohn and Nilay Patel. And if you want the rundown of the biggest news from the show, check it out right here:

Amazon has announced its latest video streaming devices for the TV: today, the company introduced an upgraded Fire TV Stick for the same $39.99 price, which now supports Dolby Atmos audio. But Amazon is getting even more aggressive on price with the launch of the new Fire TV Stick Lite at just $29.99, which it claims has the “most processing power” among streaming devices under $30. Both are capable of HD-quality streaming with expanded HDR color and will be released on September 30th.

Both new Fire TV models will be equally fast at opening apps and starting your video streams. But one difference is that the Fire TV Stick’s remote has volume and mute controls for your TV, while the Lite’s doesn’t. However, both offer support for voice search and commands through Alexa.

Fans of Amazon’s Echo Show smart speakers will be glad to know that the company is finally adding Netflix capabilities to the device. Although Echo Show users were previously able to watch networks such as Hulu and Prime Video, the absence of the popular Netflix service could be frustrating for movie enthusiasts. Now, with the new Echo Show 10, that particular problem has been solved.

According to Amazon, you will be able to use your voice to search for and start Netflix shows or movies on the Echo Show’s 10-inch screen. And if you’re cleaning the house, cooking, or otherwise busy while your Netflix video is playing, don’t worry about it. The Echo Show 10’s motorized screen will, by using computer vision technology and echolocation, move to point itself at you, so you won’t miss that crucial moment in your favorite action flick.

At its 2020 hardware event today, Amazon announced a cloud gaming platform called Luna. The news isn’t too surprising: the service has been rumored since last year, previously codenamed “Tempo,” while an Amazon-made game controller leaked out just ahead of today’s event.

It’s not clear when Luna will launch widely, but it will initially be available on PC, Mac, Fire TV, and iPhone and iPad (via web apps), with an Android version planned for after launch. Amazon says that interested users in the US can request early access to the service starting today. There’s no word on international availability.

Amazon has unveiled a new Alexa-powered security service called Guard Plus. The announcement came during Amazon’s annual devices event on Thursday afternoon. The service will cost $4.99 per month, or $49 per year.

Guard Plus is an upgrade to Alexa Guard, a free service that enables Alexa to listen for signs of danger while you’re out of the house and mimic your daily smart light usage.

Amazon unveiled the AZ1 Neural Edge processor, a silicon module that will speed up Alexa’s ability to answer your queries and commands by hundreds of milliseconds per response. The company built this module alongside MediaTek, and it will allow for on-device neural speech recognition for new products.

It’s built into the new Echo smart speaker, Echo Dot and Echo Dot with clock, Echo Dot Kids Edition, and Echo Show 10 smart display it announced today — though only the Echo and Echo Show 10 have the on-device memory needed to support Amazon’s new all-neural speech models, the company tells us. The AZ1 will also be built into more products in the Echo lineup going forward.

Amazon has just announced the latest iteration of its flagship smart display, the new Echo Show 10. The new model has a number of new changes and updates from the prior generation, but the one that matters the most is this: it moves.

Instead of being fixed in one position, as with every prior Echo Show model, the new Echo Show 10’s display is perched on a motorized base that swivels around automatically whenever you interact with the device. By using a blend of computer vision technology and echolocation (pun not intended), the Echo Show 10 can determine where you are in a room and swivel itself around to face you so you can always get a good view of the screen.

Ring latest home security camera is taking flight — literally. The new Always Home Cam is an autonomous drone that can fly around inside your home to give you a perspective of any room you want when you’re not home. Once it’s done flying, the Always Home Cam returns to its dock to charge its battery. It is expected to cost $249.99 when it starts shipping next year.

Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder and “chief inventor,” says the idea behind the Always Home Cam is to provide multiple viewpoints throughout the home without requiring the use of multiple cameras. In an interview ahead of the announcement, he said the company has spent the past two years on focused development of the device, and that it is an “obvious product that is very hard to build.” Thanks to advancements in drone technology, the company is able to make a product like this and have it work as desired.

Ring has announced its first foray into products meant for use outside of the home with a new line of security cameras designed for cars. The new Car Cam, Car Alarm, and Car Connect systems integrate into the same Ring app that supports the company’s home security alarm, video doorbells, and security cameras, and they provide owners with alerts for attempted break-ins. The new products are slated for availability starting next year.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff says the reason for expanding into the automotive market is in response to customers who have been asking for ways to secure their vehicles in a similar way to their homes with Ring products.

Amazon has debuted the $129 Eero 6 and the $229 Eero Pro 6 mesh Wi-Fi routers, along with the $89 Eero 6 extender, that support Wi-Fi 6 and have a built-in Zigbee hub to make connecting smart home tech easy. Following leaks from earlier in September, the Eero Pro 6 improves on its predecessor with support for Wi-Fi 6, which delivers faster speeds and support for more than 75 devices connected simultaneously, according to Amazon.

Similar to the previous generation, the Pro 6 is a tri-band router that offers a single band for tech that connects via 2.4GHz and two bands for 5GHz to allow more devices to connect at the fastest speeds. It can cover up to 2,000 square feet per router. The Eero 6 is a dual-band device that can cover up to 1,500 square feet, as can the extender.

During Amazon’s event today, the company announced a range of improvements that are coming to Alexa. The company says the voice assistant will be better at responding to multiple people, and that in other cases, it will be smarter about asking and remembering the answers to clarifying questions. Alexa is also being updated to change its tone in response to a conversation.

These new capabilities were demonstrated across a series of demos. The first shows off how users are able to directly teach Alexa after it asks clarifying questions. In the presentation, Alexa was asked to “set the light to Rohit’s reading mode.” The voice assistant was able to understand that it didn’t know what this reading mode was meant to be and asked the clarifying question, “What do you mean by ‘Rohit’s reading mode’?” When the presenter, Rohit, told Alexa that his light should be set to a certain percentage while in reading mode, Alexa was able to store that information and remember it for next time.

Ring has announced that it will soon offer the option to enable end-to-end encryption for the video feeds from its smart doorbells and connected home security cameras. This new higher level of security will be an optional feature and builds upon Ring’s existing encryption features. The company says it will be available for free to all Ring customers and plans to offer the feature by the end of this year.

With end-to-end encryption enabled, the video footage will be encrypted on the camera and can only be decrypted with a key stored on the mobile device used to view the recording. The setting is optional because once end-to-end encryption is enabled, certain features such as accessing the video feed through Alexa on an Echo Show or Fire TV device or sharing footage from the camera with others will no longer work. It essentially limits the Ring camera’s feed to the app itself.

Amazon has announced the fourth-generation version of its main Echo smart speaker, bringing a new spherical design and better sound performance. But the biggest change is a new, on-device speech recognition module that will locally process your audio on the Echo, making your requests faster than ever before.

Another big addition to the new Echo is what Amazon’s calling the AZ1 Neural Edge silicon module, which will process the audio of your voice requests using local machine learning speech recognition algorithms before sending the command to the cloud. The process promises to save hundreds of milliseconds in response time for your Echo.

It’s September, and that means it’s hardware season. Amazon makes a lot of it: Echo speakers, Ring doorbells, Eero routers, and weird stuff like smart rings and boxes that are streaming DVR add-ons for the Fire TV. We’re expecting updates for many of those things and maybe some weird new gadgets to boot.

Amazon is doing its event a little differently from everybody else. Rather than streaming live to the whole world, it’s an invite-only affair. But fret not: we scored one and will be live-blogging Amazon’s announcements right here as they happen. Amazon has historically announced well over 60 and sometimes over 80 products at these events, so buckle in for a very fast moving, jam-packed event full of new and possibly strange gadgets.

What seems to be an Amazon-made game controller has appeared in FCC filings (credit to Dave Zatz for spotting this first). While an Amazon-made gaming controller would be interesting on its own, these filings have been published shortly before the company’s next annual hardware event, which kicks off at 1PM ET today, suggesting Amazon could finally be revealing more about its long-rumored Project Tempo cloud gaming service very soon.

It’s difficult to glean much about the controller from the filings — I can see that the controller will support Bluetooth and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi protocols, but I can’t find any pictures of what the device might look like. And the only real tip-off we have that this is an Amazon device is the company’s logo on the filing for the FCC label.

Amazon is gearing up for its latest hardware event where it’s expected to announce its latest smart home gear. Based on prior years, we could see new Echo speakers, Alexa updates, Eero routers, Ring cameras, and more. 

But looking at Amazon’s smart home lineup right now, the question isn’t whether Amazon will have new hardware to show off. It’s whether Amazon can convince its current customers to buy them.

Amazon is launching a new environmental program called Climate Pledge Friendly that will label certain products that meet one of 19 certifications for sustainability. The goal is to help climate-conscious consumers make a better decision about whether to buy one product over another by letting them know when a brand has made an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. Amazon says more than 25,000 products should now display the program’s label.

“Climate Pledge Friendly selection includes grocery, household, fashion, beauty, and personal electronics products, as well as items from a range of other categories,” reads Amazon’s press release. “Climate Pledge Friendly products are clearly labeled in shopping results, have additional sustainability information on the product page, and are featured in a dedicated section of our store. Amazon has partnered with trusted third-party certifications, and customers will be able to discover sustainable products that meet sustainability standards that help preserve the natural world.”