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"We may never see such an event again."
So, mumbled my CNET News colleague, Ben Fox Rubin, as we were leaving the offices of the Amazon Day One in Seattle on Thursday. The megaretailer online was just dropped more than a dozen new devices on us during a presentation that lasted about an hour. It's averaging a new product ad every 5 minutes.
Do not believe me? Check the game by playing for yourself.
The dizzying day left us drunk while we were trying to take pictures and get the specs. Now, the weekend after, we are just starting to work on the hardware hangover.
But let's take a step back from the dazzling avalanche of gadgets this week. Yes, the Amazon team has shown us a lot, but there is also a lot do not have show us – and some of these omissions could give clues to Alexa's direction.
Echo Plus and Echo Dot have received cosmetic updates, but that's about it all.
Ry Crist / CNET
New material? Kinda went out …
Yes, there are a lot of new Amazon gadgets this week. But how many of them are gamechangers?
the Echo Dot and Echo Plus Both models have been redesigned, and the new Dot, bigger, should also offer slightly better sound quality. But remember, the last time Amazon has filed a new Dot on us, the company has cut the price almost by half. This time, there is no price drop – not for the Dot, and not for the Plus, which always seems too expensive for me at $ 150, because it's only a matter of time. 39, a $ 99 Echo with a Zigbee radio and a temperature sensor. .
Speaking of echo, there was no new one this year. It was not so surprising – the existing model is still up to date and its price is competitive at $ 99 – but why not launch two new fabric shells that better match the new design of the Echo Dot and Echo Plus? ? These exchangeable shells were one of Echo's major upgrades a year ago, but Amazon has essentially ignored them since. It would have been the perfect opportunity to change that and help the Echo owners of the current generation to make their devices look like new again.
Part of me wonders if, in a year, Amazon will not just get rid of Echo and will essentially replace it with a cheaper Echo Plus as the Alexa speaker of choice.
Pair Echo Sub with your Echo or Echo Plus to boost bass. Pretty good, audiophiles?
Ry Crist / CNET
No echo max, but …
Amazon could have the medium well covered, but there is still no high-end speaker like some we could see this week. If you want a single intelligent speaker with a high-end audiophile-approved sound, you'll always be better with the Apple HomePod, the Google Home Max or with a third party speaker like the Sonos One.
For now, the thing closest to Amazon to a single source premium audio device is the new second generation Echo Show. Amazon has done an admirable job in offering this device the most dramatic changes, but it should still be below the expected sound of Apple and the best deals from Google. For some reason, Amazon still seems happy to give this ground to the competition.
Amazon, however, had some answers for audiophiles. the Echo Link and Link Amp could offer a narrow appeal to anyone wanting to create their own high-end intelligent audio setup with Alexa in the center, while the Echo Sub will offer a serious bass boost to existing Echo and Echo Plus speakers. The essential part of the height of Amazon is that you can pair the Echo Sub with two Echo speakers to create a stereo 2.1 configuration. The total cost of such a configuration is $ 330, which is $ 20 less than a single Apple HomePod.
Your move, Cupertino.
The microwave oven that everyone was talking about this week is not important, but there is something inside.
Tyler Lizenby / CNET
Alexa devices? Not exactly
Yes, I know that the offer of Amazon an Alexa microwave now. I saw him. I touched it. I watched Alexa cook a potato (many of them, in fact).
But this is not the device that some people expected when rumors of the imminent arrival of the microwave were broadcast at the beginning of the week. It's a microwave oven without a microphone, and Alexa is not integrated – instead, you'll have to give your cooking orders to a separate Echo machine. And although it offers, in fact, a Dash replenishment for your popcorn, there is no quality bell and whistle with this trick – no touch screen, no speaker and no player barcodes GE takes the microwave Alexa.
Look at this:
New Amazon Microwave Responds to Voice Commands
1:22
So yes, we all saw the microwave arrive, but we did not call the AmazonBasics brand or the price of $ 60. I've thought (wrongly) that Amazon would try to make a high-end game. Instead, it has become cheap with a relatively small 700-watt microwave that looks like the one I used in my dorm about 15 years ago.
And that's exactly the goal. The microwave is not the real product here – it's the Alexa Connect Kit chipset inside. Amazon is offering this new chipset to external manufacturers as a simple and affordable way to upgrade any older appliance with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and secure access to Amazon's cloud.
In other words, Amazon does not enter the appliance industry. He shouts to manufacturers: "Look! Even an old stupid microwave can be a clever Alexa gadget!" The fact that the microwave has managed to grab so many titles just hits the point.
The Alexa Connect kit was mentioned quickly only at this week's Amazon event, but in the end, this could be the most important thing to draw from it.
Ry Crist / CNET
That's the software, stupid (but also the hardware)
In the end, do not be fooled by the flood of new gadgets. The devices of Amazon are attracting a lot of attention these days, but only because of the popular appeal of Alexa and the growing influence of the cloud 's. business. Remember a few years ago, and try to imagine this kind of hubbub for a group of new Fire tablets or new Kindle reading lights. Heck, same the fire phone was a flop.
The context around Amazon has clearly changed, but that does not mean that the material of the company is inherently more compelling than it was. Not really, anyway. For as many new gadgets as we've seen this week, Amazon's central theme seemed to be "everything is better when connected to us". The Alexa Connect kit is the physical tool that enables third-party manufacturers to achieve this – and in doing so, will further extend Alexa's reach to users' homes.
In other words, Amazon is not in the device business as much as in the ecosystem and, most of all, the flood of new hardware is really a sign that Amazon thinks the business is pretty good right now. Aside from the new gadgets, in the long run it's this ecosystem – and Amazon's ability to make it more or less ubiquitous in the modern smart home – that will determine where Alexa's going.
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