Amazon Echo Show 15 arrives with a new Neural Edge processor

At its invitational hardware event today, Amazon unveiled the new Echo Show 15 smart display, powered by the company’s next-generation “AI processor”, the AZ2 Neural Edge.

The upcoming Echo Show features a 15.6-inch screen with a resolution of 1980 × 1080. Inside is the AZ2 Neural Edge processor, which uses four cores and, according to Amazon, 22 times the TOPS (trillions of operations per second) than the latest generation chip. The biggest difference between the AZ2 and the AZ1 is the former’s ability to process machine-learning-based speech patterns “significantly faster,” according to Amazon’s announcement. Computer vision (CV) algorithms can be managed on the device rather than in the cloud, allowing the Echo Show 15 to handle features like visual identification and voice processing with latency relatively less. And like the AZ1, the AZ2 can simultaneously handle speech recognition and CV workloads.

Amazon markets the Echo Show 15 as a do-it-all device for families with a lot to do. A new widget gallery lets you display things like sticky notes, calendar events, upcoming deliveries, and recipe ideas onscreen. A smart home favorites widget allows the Echo Show 15 to act as a smart home hub, reminding you when you’ve left your smart light on or alerting you if someone is hiding around the smart security camera of your garden. Your Echo Buds, Tile trackers, and other smart devices can also be monitored here. To take it a step further, you can teach Alexa to recognize sounds, like the beeping of an open refrigerator or your baby crying, so that she can send you an alert to check on the situation.

For those times when it looks like you haven’t seen a family member in person in ages, the Echo Show 15 can also help relay messages. Sticky Notes widgets allow you to leave notes for a specific person that will only show up when Alexa recognizes that person’s face in front of their 5MP camera.

The Echo Show will launch this year for $ 250.

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List image by Amazon