Amazon’s new limited-edition Echo Studio features the face of Billie Eilish

If you were in a daze about what to get the devoted Billie Eilish fan in your family for the holidays, Amazon may have just solved your problem – assuming you’re willing to pay them $ 230.

Announced today, the Billie Eilish Limited Edition Echo Studio is available for pre-order and features the melancholy-voiced singer glued to the side of Amazon’s most premium Echo speaker, the Studio. Basically the album cover for Eilish’s new album “Happier Than Ever” was printed on a new beige colored fabric and wrapped around the Echo Studio. It creates a slightly odd-looking product that someone, somewhere, will want to put in their house.

This is Amazon’s first foray into celebrity skins; Previous attempts to dress up its bulbous smart speakers have focused on pandas and tigers designed for children’s rooms. The collaboration between Billie and Lower Echo appears to be straightforward play for the tween room – an assumption reinforced by the frilly boudoir featured in promotional images for the collaboration.

The commercialism of the move may be a sad day for many Billie fans, who flock to the singer’s genre-defying music in part because of her ability to defy the expectations that surround most young female popstars. The songwriter is quoted in an Amazon blog post about the device as saying, “I can’t wait for my cute fans to listen to my new album. Happier than ever in spatial audio, available on Amazon Music Unlimited.

Image: Amazon

As a limited edition device, the Billie Studio comes with a price increase of $ 30 over the non-Billie version, which costs $ 199. You get six months of Amazon Music included – and that also applies to existing subscribers – so you can happily listen to “Happier Than Ever” in spatial audio.

However, there are no additional features for Billie here, and no option for her dulcet tones to be your new Alexa voice. Amazon says special Billie Eilish alarms are coming soon – though these will come to all Echo speakers whether they have the singer’s face or not.

Avid Echo Studio fans may have been hoping for a real upgrade from the aging speaker. Despite being the only Echo capable of producing high-quality audio formats like HD or Ultra HD and spatial audio formats like Dolby Atmos, the Studio has not seen any spec changes since its release in 2019. .

For now, all we get is a new look. We’ll have to wait and see if this is the start of a slew of celebrity-themed skins for Echo devices or a one-off collaboration. At the top of our list, Roy Kent wrapped around the soccer ball-shaped Echo, with the naughty Briton as the celebrity voice for Alexa. Although, unfortunately, Siri probably has doubts about the resemblance of the Ted Lasso star.

Update, 4:49 p.m. ET September 22, 2021: Added that all Echo devices will be able to use Billie Eilish special alarms when released.