The Alexa Hub: Concepts, Expectations, and Performance at Amazon Echo Hub 2, a Smartphone for Home Smart Homes, Part 1: Preorder
While I want to spend some time with this device in my home and put it through its paces with my over 100 devices connected to Alexa, my first impressions are that this will be a useful addition to the Echo lineup for smart home users. It will be available for preorder soon and shipping later this year. We’ve got more details on the Echo Hub in this post.
In an interview with The Verge ahead of the event, Limp explained that the device relies on widgets similar to those you see on current Show devices but that are “smart home forward.” (That’s very much not the case on current Echo Show smart displays.)
Available to preorder soon and shipping later this year, the Echo Hub will come with a wall-mount bracket, power adapter, and six-foot cable (USB-A to C). The frames in wood, white, and metallic can be painted as well as the table accessory stand can be purchased for $29.99.
The widgets include icons or larger group tiles for your favorite devices, cameras, climate, locks, and security (arming or disarming a Ring security system). You can customize the screen, and along the side, a rooms panel gives you access to other defined rooms in the house and the option to run Routines directly from the panel.
The Alexa Control Panel for the Smart Home: Where Do You Stand? How Does Your Smart Home Get Its Lights and How You Can Turn It On?
Between tapping on the screen and a responding device the company worked hard to bring down the lag. Locally connected devices over Thread, Matter, Bluetooth, or Zigbee respond very quickly — “as fast as a light switch,” he says.
You can use built-in speakers and microphone array to talk to anyone at your home video doorbell or via Drop In with Echo devices. You can also listen, watch, or use voice control to do that. Limp says it will support Prime Video, Hulu, and Tubi, “among others,” at launch.
The best customer of Amazon is the one with at least 20 smart home devices, who might find it difficult to manage scrolling through all of the countless device lists in theAlexa app.
I wrote about how the control panel option for the smart home needs to be cheap and accessible for people who don’t like to leave their phones at home and for visitors who want to turn on the lights. I had hoped that the Pixel Tablet would work well for this niche, but it didn’t; it doesn’t have the same connection as the echo hub.
Map View is a new map interface option that lets you build a digital version of your home’s floor plan, pin connected devices to each room, and then control them individually just by tapping on them.
“It’s super fun,” says Limp. If I want to change the thermostat, I just tap it and its controls will come up. If I want to zoom into the upper floor and turn on a bedroom light, I can just tap and get the controls to dim it or do whatever. It’s a different paradigm; it’s really interesting.”
The approach clearly makes a lot of sense, as it is not the first to do this. It means you don’t have to remember the exact name of the light to the right of the sofa; you can see it and tap on it.
The Alexa Map View will be available in the US later this year through the Alexa app — but only on compatible lidar-equipped iOS devices (Pro and Max models from the iPhone 12 and newer) at launch. It’s coming to the Echo Hub early next year.
Amazon Smart Displays: A State of the Art and a Status Report from the Prototype Room at HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia
I didn’t get to try this shift from ambient mode (showing a clock or pictures) to the widgets, as there were always too many people crowded around the thing, but I did try the new adaptive content feature on a nearby Echo Show 8 that has a similar function of showing different content when you are further away from when you are up close, and it adjusted reasonably quickly as I approached.
While it’s clearly designed to be wall-mounted, using it on a tabletop feels like a good alternative, although you have to pay $29.99 for a Sanus stand (the same company that makes the Show 15 accessories).
The third-gen Echo Show 8 ($149.99) also has Amazon’s latest AZ2 processor, which makes it 40 percent faster, Amazon’s Dave Limp said at the fall hardware event this week. And it certainly felt snappier in my minute or so of playing with it in the demo room at Amazon’s new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.
The smart display has edge-to-edge glass that is more visible, and a better rear speaker that promises better audio. It’s getting spatial audio processing technology to boost its music capabilities, which will be similar to the Echo Studio’s sound capabilities, Heather Zorn, VP of Alexa, told me.
According to Amazon, new room adaption tech senses the acoustics of the room and fine-tunes play for optimal sound. However, we weren’t able to put this to any test in the demo room.
The camera (still 13 megapixels) has been relocated to the middle (why did it take so long?), which should make it more usable for Zoom calls, something the current version does relatively well for a smart display. The camera also enables a neat new feature called Adaptive Content, which changes how it displays content based on how close you are. This should make it a better glanceable display and more effective as a touch screen, as it presents a more touch-friendly UI as you get up close.
New quick-access buttons on the homescreen will help with this, too. They’re like mini versions of the Echo Show 15’s widgets, bringing up the weather and other info with one tap. The widgets didn’t seem to be fully optimized for the display yet, though, looking a bit like iPhone apps on an iPad screen.