Amazon built the Trojan Horse for your smart home

Amazon's product launch spree continues, this time with a bunch of new Alexa-powered Echo devices. The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy explains what the new Echo Show 16 finally got right, why a digital photo frame could be Amazon's next big Alexa hit, and whether this new way of thinking about smart home gadgets might help Amazon defeat the HomeView and win a space in your kitchen. Further reading: Apple announces its first touchscreen MacBook Pro Amazon’s new Echo line is here: the 6 biggest updates Here’s Virgin Galactic’s new Apeiron spaceship Amazon’s new Echo line is here: the 6 biggest updates Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:43David Pierce?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of omnidirectional microphones. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show, has Amazon finally figured out smart home hardware? But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  I'm Travis Larchuk, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, October 28, 2026. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Apple took the old MacBook Pro Touch Bar and made it an entire touchscreen? Today, Apple finally caught up to basically every other laptop manufacturer and announced a new touchscreen MacBook Pro. It's got an OLED display and it starts at $2,899. But the glowing Apple logo is back. Also, you should take a look at this. The default desktop wallpaper is a series of white vertical lines that reminds me an awful lot of the cracked iPhone Duo screen, and I don't know. Also in hardware news,

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Amazon announced a boatload of new Echo stuff today. The headliner is a smart home hub with a 16-inch display. They also announced a studio speaker with a camera, an alarm clock, updated dots, and a digital photo frame that Amazon explicitly says only displays photos. Don't worry, it only displays photos. And finally, Virgin Galactic showed off its next ship for commercial spaceflight. It's called Aperon, which Virgin Galactic says is from the ancient Greek for boundless. The name Aperon won in a public vote against Horizon, Explorer, and Ascend. But does this poll really reflect the voice of the people

• 3:23Speaker 05

  if spaceship-y McSpaceshipface wasn't an option? You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, October 28, 2026.

• 3:34David Pierce?

  Over the last few weeks, Amazon has been shipping a lot of new devices, new Kindles, new cameras, new tablets, lots of new things. But the biggest news so far is a bunch of new Echo devices, Amazon's true centerpiece Alexa smart home devices. By the way, we're going to say Alexa a lot in this episode, so go ahead and mute any nearby Amazon microphones. Sorry in advance. Jen Tuohy on our team has seen all of the new devices, including one that I think might be the best evidence yet that Amazon finally knows what people want from the smart home. She's seen them all, she's touched them all, she's going to come on and tell us about it. Let's do it. Jen Tuohy, welcome back to the show.

• 4:13Speaker 06

  Hello, hello, David. Very happy to be here.

• 4:15David Pierce?

  The Echo Show 16, I think, strikes me as maybe the most interesting and important Echo device that has launched in a very long time. There's a bunch of new hardware. I want to talk through all of the new hardware, but there is something interesting happening on the Amazon hardware team, particularly with Alexa. And I think the Echo Show 16 to me is like the biggest new kind of swing from Amazon in a very long time. So first, can you just tell me a little bit about this device? And if you think it's as big a deal as I do?

• 4:48Speaker 06

  This is sort of the smart display I've always hoped that they would make. That was, and I think, because the, I don't want to get too much in the history of the smart display, but most people, if you remember the original smart display, it wasn't designed to be touched. It wasn't designed, it wasn't a, an iPad or a tablet. It was just a visual to see your voice assistant. So it was always a bit frustrating because you had this beautiful screen that you wanted to touch, but you couldn't. Well, you could, but it didn't do anything, or it was very limited. And it's taken many iterations and a full-on tablet hardware guy in Panos Panay, originally from Microsoft, to bring us to a point where we are almost at a tablet here. It is not a tablet. It is not a Pixel tablet. I'm sorry, David, if you were thinking

• 5:33Speaker 06

  that maybe this was the Pixel tablet of Amazon's version. It's not there.

• 5:36David Pierce?

  It's close.

• 5:36Speaker 06

  But it's close.

• 5:37David Pierce?

  It is almost, it's like one or two interesting weird ideas away from being a Pixel tablet, which might be a good thing for Amazon, to be fair.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  And also not as expensive. So that's the fine line here. This is a home device that you, you know, you maybe want to buy a couple of, so it can't cost a fortune, although it isn't cheap. So, but yes, it is a 16-inch smart display, but instead of a big bulbous speaker, which most Echo Shows have had since day one, although they've morphed over the years to be a little more elegant, this has a very thin speaker behind it. So it basically, it looks like a really small iMac. It's actually what it looks like when you have it on a countertop. So it has a little mount that you can buy that tilts and swivels. And it's a very beautiful screen.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  There's a nanomat version, of course. So it actually, I spoke to Panos at the briefing, and he said it was very much, there's a lot of connection with the new Alexa tablet. It looks very similar. But it is not a tablet. It is a smart display. It is, it is big. This was probably my, I mean, it was interesting. Last week, I went and saw the Apple Home View, and my first thought was, wow, that's much smaller than I expected.

• 6:56David Pierce?

  Right.

• 6:56Speaker 06

  And when they literally unveiled this, they pulled the sheet off. I was like, wow, that's a lot bigger than I was expecting.

• 7:03David Pierce?

  Yes, 16 inches is not a small, even as like, if you're looking at it as sort of a kitchen television, it's still a pretty big thing.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  It is. It's a large device. And yes, that's, I mean, that's the reason here, I would say for the size, is it is a Fire TV. So this is a Fire TV. This is a smart home hub. This is a smart home dashboard. It also has a calendar, and it can be wall-mounted, or it can be on your kitchen counter, or whichever counter you would like. And the size is a bit of a challenge, I think, from that perspective, because it, that's, it's hard. You know, we talked about this at length when we were talking about the Home View. It's like, where do you find a place for devices like this? I think the wall mounting is really interesting. I think we may find a lot of people want to go that way. Because at its sort of core, it's designed as like a family hub.

• 7:55Speaker 06

  Just, that's, it's graduating from a smart display into becoming sort of the hub of your family. And there's a really key new UI change that's going to, I think, that is really important here, is that you can now choose one of four screens that just stay on your Echo Show. Instead of getting those rotating screens that they used to do, like with Alexa suggestions, the occasional ad, photos, now you can just have your calendar, so it can be like a Skylight calendar. You can just have your smart home manager, so you can go up and press your buttons. You can just have your photos, if that's what you want. And you can just have a Fire TV interface if you just want it to be your TV.

• 8:38Speaker 06

  So yeah, it's definitely the evolution of the smart display. And I feel like it's gone all the way from really, really simple to actually, this is a full-on computer in your kitchen.

• 8:52David Pierce?

  So yes, but also, this feels to me like Amazon finally figuring out what people actually want in their house, right? Like, we give Amazon a lot of crap about its just relentless Amazon-ing of everything. They're like, oh, any device that you want. Do you want to shop right now? It's like, actually not how people experience devices. But this, to me, is exactly, exactly the way that you should handle a device like this in your house. It's like, what I don't want is just a screen randomly showing me stuff as I attempt to live my life. What I do want is to be able to have access to this kind of ambient computer. And then when it's not doing its job,

• 9:36David Pierce?

  it does something else for me, right? This is the thing. It's so much better to me that I can just say, when this is not in use, I want it to be a photo frame. And it will, like, just the hoops you have had to jump through to get this to do those basic things for you over time. And the idea with these computers, and I've talked about this with every person who has ever tried to make one of these, and I know you have too. It's like, most of the time, you're not using it. And what it does when no one is using it is so incredibly important. And what Amazon decided for a decade was that the thing to do when you're not using it is show you ads. And like, no, wrong, incorrect answer. So, and so this, to me, is like, they finally looked at this and said, oh, what can this be when it's not being the home hub?

• 10:20David Pierce?

  That it will be several times a day for you, but isn't going to be most of the time. And again, we'll see how they actually did this. There's a lot of like, little things about the UI. But this, to me, strikes me as exactly the correct answer.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is. I mean, it is, it feels right because you can customize it now. That was one of the problems before, is that you just got what Amazon gave you. There was a little bit of customization options, but you never could just have what you wanted. And Panos even said this several times at the event. He said, "This is what people have been asking for. You know, we are doing what the customers want." And to be, to be clear, though, if you, if you, if you miss and love that weird rotating screen of random crap that Amazon likes to put on the show, you can still have that.

• 11:04David Pierce?

  And also, please email us and explain yourself.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  It is an option. And I think it was a little hard to get a straight answer. I think the ads will also still be there, but only if you choose that one. If you don't choose that one, you will not see anything. You won't see any suggestions. It'll just be. The three displays, the three options that we talked about. So and then and it's got and so you can just have it stay that way. So if you just want your calendar to be there all the time, it can be that way. Or you can also have ambient mode. So you can have your photos and then as you approach, it will switch to your home screen. So you have the option, which again, this customization, these are, these are the key elements for this because as we've discussed in the past, everyone's home use cases are

• 11:52Speaker 06

  completely different. And how you're gonna show a device like this, where it's gonna be, how you're gonna use it. Every home is gonna use it in a different way. So to be able to customize it to your use case is really what's needed. And there's a new, an interesting new feature that I haven't quite decided how I feel about. But it's a new way you interact with Alexa Plus and it's called Amazon or Alexa Cards. And so one of the screens you can have is just all of your interactions with Alexa Plus as cards. So it's basically bringing, it's like, so when you use ChatGPT, you'll have like a sidebar, right? With every conversation you've had. And what Amazon's doing here is every time you talk to Alexa Plus, it creates a little

• 12:35Speaker 06

  card for every, every element you've discussed around one subject. So you can easily go back to them, but it's presented very visually. And these cards also show up in the Amazon Alexa app. And then, and on any services that you go to, so you can always kind of go back. So if you're planning a trip, which, which is what everyone does with AI, right? That's what we, that's what we use it for. You can just click back in and then it uses, this is one of the new features of Alexa Plus is it will pull in context and different suggestions. So here's where we start veering into the advertising territory. So they showed a chicken coop. Someone was making a chicken coop. I don't know if that was specially for me or not, but.

• 13:19David Pierce?

  Cause I hear someone was making a chicken coop and I'm like, oh, they stole Jen's idea. Cool, cool, cool. Done it.

• 13:23Speaker 06

  And then as you scroll through, there were YouTube videos about making a chicken coop. And then there was, oh, you can go buy hardware cloth from Amazon for your chicken coop. So, you know, they were pulling, pulling different things in suggestions, those, those types of things. And then these cards, as I said, they sort of live anywhere that you go to access your Alexa Plus. So it, this is, whilst it's very much a home device, it's also really trying to encourage you to use Alexa Plus throughout your life. And it has the sort of personal context element as well, which is, is another sort of newish element for the Alexa devices. But I do think the size is a challenge and it also means it's very expensive.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  I mean, this is not an inexpensive device with the nanomatt screen, which is really nice. This was my first time seeing a nanomatt.

• 14:11David Pierce?

  It's really nice, right? It's really nice. Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  But it's $570.

• 14:17David Pierce?

  I think $570 is too much.

• 14:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:21David Pierce?

  I think.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. Hundred dollars off if you preorder it, so.

• 14:24David Pierce?

  That's, that's something, but it, it starts at $400, right?

• 14:28Speaker 06

  So it's $499 for the non nanomatt display, for $399 if you preorder it.

• 14:34David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 14:35Speaker 06

  So.

• 14:35David Pierce?

  That's expensive.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  It is. And I think the $399, the $100 off, you've got to think is, ah, what else is $399 that you might be considering buying right now for your kitchen counter?

• 14:47David Pierce?

  Indeed.

• 14:47Speaker 06

  So, I mean, if you compare those two things, this has a lot more going for it overall, but Apple's device has that personal context, which Amazon is striving for, but hasn't achieved. And I haven't tried the Home View yet. So in my own home, I've just seen it. And I do think that extension of your iPhone is still gonna be sort of the killer feature there. And that's something that Amazon just can't do. But this has a lot more capability.

• 15:19David Pierce?

  Yeah. It's, that's the trade that I think is gonna be so fascinating. Cause Apple, the more I think about Home View, the more it's obvious that thing is just an accessory to your iPhone.

• 15:29Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 15:29David Pierce?

  Which on the one hand is, is just a sort of obvious business decision from Apple, the company that makes and sells iPhones to give you yet another reason to buy an iPhone. But on the other hand, is a, is a choice to make, right? It gives them the personal context. It, it brings in a bunch of apps. I still think the CarPlay integration is a stupid, bad idea, but like you can see how it's sort of bootstrapping the Home View through your iPhone in a way that is probably gonna work for a lot of people. This is the exact opposite approach, right? They're saying we are throwing, this is a self-contained massively powerful tablet for your house.

• 16:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 16:02David Pierce?

  And it's just going to be fascinating to actually get both of those into your house and see what it is like to live with them.

• 16:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. And this actually runs a MediaTek processor. So this wasn't even one of like Amazon's AZ chips. This is like a full on, I mean, they, they really jumped, jumped up the game here.

• 16:21Speaker 06

  But again, you're paying for it and I just feel like that price point is gonna be a tough sell.

• 16:26David Pierce?

  Part of me is like, could you have just done all of this on a 12 inch tablet that might've solved all of my problems?

• 16:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:31David Pierce?

  The same way?

• 16:32Speaker 06

  That's where I was, I mean, it does look great, but yeah, just on a big plinth, it's very different from on my dining, on my kitchen counter with the like bread and the, the salt and the butter and everything around it. And it's like, ah, this thing's too big.

• 16:46David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah, it'll be, it'll be an interesting one.

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• 20:09David Pierce?

  You mentioned a few minutes ago, this idea that Amazon is finally starting to figure out how to actually integrate Alexa into your house in a much better way, which feels to me like the story of all the other hardware here, right? The Echo Show is the one that is like, this is now the smart centerpiece of your house, which I think you need if you're somebody like Amazon trying to do this. All the other stuff seems to have been very cleverly designed to sort of hide Alexa around your house in a way that I think is very smart. So can you just kind of walk me through the other devices they announced? And start with the photo frame, because this to me is like the exact example of the thing that I think Amazon has taken so long to get right that it is finally starting to get right.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  I know, actually, the photo frame is kind of like the complete opposite of the show 16, but it's also exactly what people have been asking for. So I would say there are two people who have, two types of people who use Echo smart displays. One is someone that wants to use it for their smart home, and that's where it's very frustrating because it hasn't been that useful. And then the other is I just want a photo frame, a digital photo frame, that I can also set timers with and like ask about the weather. And for too long, a regular Echo Show didn't really do either of those things well because it threw ads in. With this Echo frame, it is like an Aura, it is like one of those digital photo frames

• 21:32Speaker 06

  you can go and buy for a few hundred dollars, just shows your pictures, but you can say, "Hey, A, show me the pictures from my trip to Japan last year," and it will just bring up that album. So you don't have to pull up your phone, load the album. You can say, "Hey, show me pictures of David from school," and it will show you pictures. You know, it knows, it uses place and context. So yeah, place and context, like time, any other sort of metadata, I suppose, in the image that it can use, as well as face recognition. So you have to tell it, you have to flag people that you know, and then so you can say, "Hey, bring up pictures of my daughter," and it'll know who you're talking about.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  That is really, I think that's going to be a really nice feature. It's very much designed for gifting, they kept saying. And one thing they have is they've added a voice memo. So when you upload a photo, you can upload a memo with it too, so your photos can talk to you, which is kind of sweet. So then when you, when you package it up, when you order it for grandma, you can attach a message and then she'll open it, and there'll be a picture of you with a little Christmas message. It's like, you've sold a lot of people right there.

• 22:45David Pierce?

  I'm absolutely convinced this thing is going to be a giant hit.

• 22:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's.

• 22:49David Pierce?

  It's just, it's exactly what you said, right? It's a picture frame that can play music and set timers.

• 22:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, I wouldn't probably listen to music on this, but some people will.

• 22:57David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's, that's fair. I suspect it will not sound great. But I think just that basic idea, like even the idea of, "Hey, look, I bought you this, this Amazon Echo to use in your house." There's just a vast quantity of people who are like, "What, what is that for? Why do I care? I have no, I have no use for this." But, I mean, photo frames are, do gangbusters. Like, of course it's for gifting. I think no one has ever bought themselves a photo frame, like an Aura frame, but everyone has bought someone else one of these at some point. And so the idea of just taking this and being like, "Okay, this is, this is sort of the Alexa Trojan horse into people's house because what they want is a photo frame and we're going to give it to them." And by the way, Amazon, the photo stuff is unlimited if you're a Prime subscriber.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  Yes, so you don't, there's no restriction.

• 23:43David Pierce?

  It's not a bad deal. Like, the photo interface on Amazon kind of sucks, but as a place to just dump your photos to have another place to have them if you're a Prime subscriber is a thing that I've recommended forever, like just as a, as a second backup. Just dump them all in there. It's free, it doesn't cost you anything additional.

• 23:57Speaker 06

  Doesn't cost anything.

• 23:58David Pierce?

  And now, that's a pretty powerful combination.

• 24:01Speaker 06

  And they were making the point that, you know, if you have an iPhone, as long as you just open the Alexa app like once a month, it can just suck in everything from your photos app. So it's limited, you know, it shouldn't be a lot of friction. And one thing, and I wrote about this actually in my recent review of Alexa, because this is on the current shows, but the Alexa algorithms are able to sort of pair photos together. So, because, you know, most photos, you take a portrait, right? These days. And portrait doesn't look great on a photo frame. But what they do is they'll pair two portrait photos side by side, but instead of just doing random two photos side by side, it'll actually pull, and I'll get pictures of my son when he was in kindergarten next to my son in college.

• 24:42Speaker 06

  Like, it uses this really interesting algorithm to sort of pull matching images from across your timeline. And that, it's actually, a few times, sort of, "Look, I'm gonna cry."

• 24:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, all it has to show you is your kid when they're little and your kid when you drop them off at college, and every parent in the world just goes to mud.

• 25:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, you don't have to, I mean, I've spent countless hours of my 30s trying to sort through my photo albums and like do things like this myself, and it just does it all for you. I mean, and that's a killer feature. And there is no camera in this, which is another reason people don't necessarily want the shows. It does have microphones and speakers because it plays the voice memos and music, but you can mute the microphone. So if you know, in terms of privacy, if you don't want a listening microphone. But yeah, it's a very, as you say, it's the Trojan horse, I would say, because it's still, it's $200. So we have definitely moved away from cheap Amazon. That does not exist anymore when it comes to these Echo displays.

• 25:44David Pierce?

  I want to come back to that in a minute, because there is some important shift that has happened here that I don't think is just about RAM prices and the cost of hardware. Like, I think Amazon has made a big strategic shift in how it thinks about Alexa. But before we get to that, just run me very quickly through the other ones.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  Okay, so we've got a, the other new product is the Echo Time, and this is basically, it looks like an Echo Dot with clock merged with an Echo Spot and got bigger.

• 26:15David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 26:16Speaker 06

  So if you remember.

• 26:19David Pierce?

  So round thing, flat face clock.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  With a flat face, and it's a screen, it's a three and a half inch screen. It's quite, again, quite big. The Echo Spot is a little bit smaller, and it comes in a few different colors. There's a pale pink, and then some sort of kids themed ones that are sort of very vibrant. And it's just designed to be a clock, no camera. It's basically an Echo Dot itself in terms of the internals, the new Echo Dot, which we'll talk about shortly. So it's a smart home hub, it's got, you know, sounds good, good bass, but then it is a clock and you can set your alarm on the screen, so it's touchscreen.

• 26:59David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  It's also an Alexa smart speaker, and it has a really neat, they call it a smart alarm feature, and it uses onboard ultrasound sensing and a transducer to read your breathing patterns and micro-movements and figure out when it's best to wake you up. So if you set your alarm for like 7:00 AM, the 30 minutes beforehand, it will monitor your breathing patterns to figure out when you're at the lightest stage of sleep and wake you up then, rather than hitting you when you're, you know that, you know, you have that when you're sleeping, you're like, you kind of get wakeful, and then you go back to sleep, and then you're like the deepest sleep ever, and your alarm goes off, and you're like, "Oh my God, my life is gonna be miserable today."

• 27:44David Pierce?

  And this is a whole category of product people like. People, you can buy the ones that'll do the, like, slow increase in light over those 30 minutes to wake you up.

• 27:52Speaker 06

  So this also has that too.

• 27:53David Pierce?

  Oh, it does, okay.

• 27:54Speaker 06

  Yes, so the screen can brighten gradually. So at nighttime, all the blue light is taken out and it dims down, and then in the morning, when your alarm starts, it will gradually, using like a sunrise scene, brighten to hopefully wake you, wake you up. Because it's a smart home hub, ZigBee and Matter, you can connect your smart bulbs in your bedroom and have those brighten at the same time. This is something we've seen a lot, a lot of products offer, but yeah, this is doing all of that. It's a full-on smart alarm clock, basically.

• 28:21David Pierce?

  This is another Trojan horse thing, right? Like, that's the other day. Because a lot of people buy these smart alarm clocks. I've, I've used them a few times, they're honestly great, like.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  Like the hatch and the.

• 28:31David Pierce?

  Yeah, and they have one that's basically, looks like a big sun that just sits there and just sort of like blares light at you until you wake up in the morning. It's amazing. And, and it's the sort of thing that is. Too expensive for most people and it's expensive for the thing that it offers. But it is, it is a thing that you will buy anyway, or at least some people will buy anyway. And again, like I keep coming back to, Amazon has had this idea that what everybody is going to want is Alexa everywhere. And what they've flipped here is they're like, we're just going to put Alexa inside of things people already want.

• 29:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 29:02David Pierce?

  And that is such a good and better idea.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:06David Pierce?

  And it makes me so happy and we're finally out of this, like, everybody is going to blow up their lives to make their smart home better idea. At least with the like, I'm, I'm, I'm out over my skis on this changing the world here, but like, the idea that actually what we're going to do is just sort of nestle this stuff into people's homes and lives in ways that are just additive to devices they already want is such the correct idea for how to do the smart home. And I've been waiting for somebody to do this for so long and it just makes me very happy. So there's, there's two more things to talk about.

• 29:37Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 29:37David Pierce?

  We can skip the Echo Dot because it's a better Echo Dot, whatever.

• 29:40Speaker 06

  It is.

• 29:40David Pierce?

  Tell me about the Studio with the home camera.

• 29:43Speaker 06

  Okay, so the Echo Studio has now got the option of a home camera. And this is the first Echo speaker with a camera. So you've only ever been able to get an Echo speaker, smart displays with cameras. This is the first time they've put a camera in a speaker. It's a 13 megapixel camera. It's basically the same Echo Studio, so it's the same sound. But with this, the idea about the camera is it now brings visual ID. So visual ID is a feature on show devices. So when you approach the show, it knows who you are and it can give you your content. Again, this is what the Home View offers. Alexa's idea of your content would be like your calendar, maybe your recipes that you saved,

• 30:28Speaker 06

  your favorite movies, those types of things, things that you've emailed to Alexa because you can now email content to Alexa. So it doesn't have the same kind of selling point as the, the Home View in terms of personal context, but they are moving that way. You can definitely see it. And that's why putting a camera in a speaker means you can have that visual ID without spending the extra money for a screen if you didn't want a screen. The, I think the killer use case here is calling, is a video calling device. So what they demoed was Panos actually called his parents.

• 31:01David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 31:03Speaker 06

  And you used, you had the Echo Studio sitting on the TV console. And then the, the Fire TV became the screen. So you, so you would just, you, the, the camera was in the studio, not in your TV. But you could do video calling with your family through the, through the larger screen in your home, which is kind of where you want to do that. So, and this is, we've seen, was it the Portal had this as an option?

• 31:27David Pierce?

  I was just about to say, RIP to the Facebook Portal.

• 31:29Speaker 06

  And that was a great feature, that one. So this, I could see this being the reason people would want to get this. Although the Echo Studio is $250, so it's not an inexpensive device, but you can pair it with your Fire TV as your TV speakers.

• 31:44David Pierce?

  It's essentially a soundbar.

• 31:46Speaker 06

  It's a soundbar with a camera in. So, you know, if you're not comfortable with the camera, you do not have to, there is an Echo Studio without the camera. But that is, that, that was their sort of, their main selling point. And then they were also, just the idea is this is also a camera in your home. If you want to use it for a pet cam or to check on your kids, it works that way. And as an accessibility option, and this was a point I've heard many times before about the Echo show devices, because you can hold things up to Alexa and say, what is this? Which can be useful for low vision. I mean, I think we've actually had someone on the Vergecast talking about this many years ago. And he said, but the problem with people buying Echo shows who are visually impaired is they don't need a screen. So why are we, why are they spending the money on a screen?

• 32:29Speaker 06

  So now that was one reason that they gave for putting a camera in the smart speaker. It's going to be interesting to see if this sort of catches on because I feel like if you do a lot of Alexa video calling, you're probably going to be using a show. And the idea of sticking a camera in your soundbar,

• 32:47Speaker 06

  as you say, essentially your soundbar, your, is, is, I don't know. People don't really like being watched when they're watching TV, but.

• 32:55David Pierce?

  Of all of these announcements, this is the one that I, I find sort of least compelling in my own house. Just because the place to put this is, like you said, it's under your TV staring at you on the couch. And that's just, that's just complicated. My guess is this will be the sort of thing that appeals to a relatively small number of people, but that small number of people will find it vastly useful.

• 33:16Speaker 06

  They're going to want it, yeah.

• 33:17David Pierce?

  And most of those people are Amazon employees. Like you just said, you're like, oh, if you're a heavy user of Alexa calling and I'm like, Amazon employees. Luckily, there's a lot of them, I guess. I don't know. It'll be fine. Before I let you go, I, I do want to talk about the, the hardware strategy here just for a second. We, we've talked about almost exclusively very expensive devices, right? And this is from a company that we're used to selling like kind of cheap crap. Like the, the goal was never to make great hardware. It was to, as inexpensively and ubiquitously as possible, just dump hardware into your house, right? Like you just, you just load amazon.com and they'll give you an Echo Dot. Has been the case for like years.

• 33:59David Pierce?

  This is very strategically different from that. Like there, there's clearly a bet here that is like, if, if we make not cheap hardware that is so disposable that you'll end up with it by accident, but actually good, high-end, expensive hardware that, that we can make a different move into your house. Do you think this is the right move for Amazon? This company is not, I would say necessarily had a rich history of making terrific hardware. Do you think this is the right move?

• 34:28Speaker 06

  I do. This is speaking to their existing customers, like people that use Alexa and love it. They always tell me this, everyone that uses Alexa loves her, her, they love to.

• 34:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, don't like that. Not Thanos.

• 34:42Speaker 06

  But I, it's, it's been frustrating because the capability that you're promised from these devices rarely actually works that way. And because they've been underpowered, and I've written this a few times, they've always, I've always felt like the, the possibilities were there, but the hardware was underpowered. So you couldn't always do what you wanted to be able to do.

• 35:06Speaker 06

  You were very much driven towards only using your voice and that was not useful because and up until a year ago, Amazon's voice assistant was rather difficult to communicate with. You had to use specific nomenclature. Now you have that more natural conversational ability with Alexa Plus and the hardware to keep up with it. And a lot of this hardware uses their new Omnisense technology, which they talked about a lot at this presentation. They announced it last year, but we hadn't really heard much about it. But every device has the same sensors in, so presence, humidity, temperature. So the more devices you have around your house, the more context your smart home is being fed. And it, and actually Panos talked about this a lot.

• 35:48Speaker 06

  One of the, both of the new speakers, the Studio and the Dot, uses Omnisense in its new advanced surround sound system. It's got a fancy name, I forget it, but some sort of advanced audio. Like when you put the speakers in that, in the room, it, they know where you are in relation to them. So, and this also is supposed to help with them hearing you. So the beam form, beam forming microphones will kind of lock in on where you are to be able to just focus on what you're saying. So apparently they should be a lot better at listening to you because that's probably one of the number one complaints you hear from Amazon Echo users is, it doesn't listen to me properly. So I think it's, it's meeting the improvements in hardware and meeting the customers where they want it to.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  As to Panos's point about the new interface too, I think that is what people have been asking for. Whether people are going to be able or willing to spend this amount of money on these devices is going to be the big question. And that's a big gamble here because everything's more expensive. They talked about how, you know, with the RAM and chips, everything costs more right now. These aren't that expensive relatively when you think about that, but the Echo Dot is now a hundred dollars. And I, you know, it used to be 50. So everything has gone up or, you know, doubled basically. So that's, that's the real challenge, but you don't need seven or eight devices in your home. You could, two or three of these devices would, would easily work.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  So depending on, you know, which rooms you wanted to use it in. But I feel like if you have, you know, you've got the, as you said, there's certain rooms that, that most of these devices work. A couple of dots around the house, the show 16 in the kitchen, and then the frame in the living room and the, the time, sorry, Echo time, I just can't quite.

• 37:38David Pierce?

  It's tough. I agree. I'm with you.

• 37:40Speaker 06

  In the bedroom. I mean, it, it does add up, but you also then have this sort of whole, whole home system. It's going to be, I don't know, you, would you, you're quite a big Echo device user, aren't you, David? Which one would you buy?

• 37:53David Pierce?

  Oh, the time is the one that immediately I'm like, this, this just makes perfect sense to me. Because again, it, it is not just convincing me that what I need is more Echo speakers, more places. It is, it solves a different problem, right? It's an actual thing. I'm going to end up giving a bunch of the photo frames to people. I'm confident. It's, it's a good thing. I have small children, the like, I'm going to put this in your house and just show you pictures of my kids. It's such an easy win all the time with grandparents that like, I'm sure I'll end up doing that. But to me, I think the, the big question for me is just going to be, is the show too big? Because I want exactly the thing it pretends to be. It's the reason I'm so excited about it, right? The, the kitchen TV slash sort of ambient, what's going on during your day device

• 38:38David Pierce?

  that Echo shows have always almost kind of been, but have never actually pulled off in a way that is sort of pleasing to use. If it can be that, plus all of the other good reasons to have Alexa front and center in your kitchen, that thing becomes a, a device I will use many times every single day. In a way that shows have always kind of annoyed me trying to solve that problem. But it is really expensive, like $600 is just a really, really, really high bar for a product like that in my life. But the like $400 intro price, I think is going to work for some people. But yeah, I think the, we're, we're due for a really fun Home View versus Echo Show fight

• 39:20David Pierce?

  that is, is very much about like, what is the right way to do the smart home? That I'm very excited to see. So you're going to have to come back when we can litigate that properly.

• 39:28Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 39:28David Pierce?

  All right, Jen, Jen, thank you. Good to see you. We'll do this again soon, I'm sure.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  Thank you. Bye.

• 39:35David Pierce?

  Support for the show comes from Quince. We all have our favorite clothes we love to break out when things get a little chillier. Maybe it's that cool bomber jacket or the sweater that you could wear literally every day. These are exactly the kinds of pieces that Quince specializes in. Quince offers high-quality wardrobe essentials made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool. So it's been about a year now since I started picking up Quince. And one of the things that they talk about is how they just offer those staples that end up being the things that you go to and grab in your closet time and time again. And honestly, it's kind of true. For me, that's become the Mongolian cashmere quarters of sweater I got towards the end of last fall.

• 40:19David Pierce?

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• 40:50Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Muccio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  We're building 8Sleep for daytime.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Hardware that helps blind people see.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  We've got deep tech to change the weather.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand. What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Like, one day, we're just like, screw Arizona. And dairy?

• 41:37Speaker 03

  I never imagined my life journey would be milk.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open

• 42:02David Pierce?

  for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 42:16David Pierce?

  All right, before we go, I have one more thing for you. I just have a recommendation for a podcast. Presumably, you are here because you like podcasts. You should go listen to a podcast called Shell Game. It's made by a journalist called Evan Ratliff, who has been doing some really interesting AI experiments over the last couple of years. This is the third season of the show. The first season of the show, he spent a long time basically cloning his own voice and tricking other people with it. He's like deep down the well of how can people use AI for interesting and good and nefarious reasons? This season is all about slop. We live in a moment where AI-generated everything is suddenly taking over the universe.

• 42:57David Pierce?

  And every person, every platform, every social app, every, everybody is having to figure out what to do about it. Spotify just removed 50 million AI-generated songs from its platform. Like, this is the scale of slop we're dealing with now, and it's only going to get worse. And Evan does a great job of diving into where slop comes from, why it has become such a bizarre phenomenon all over the place, and whether there's anything we can do about it, and frankly, if we even want to do anything about it. The, the big bet that a lot of these companies are making is that ultimately, actually, we're going to be fine with slop. Yes, the music will be a little worse. Yes, you won't like the videos as much. Yes, this stuff won't be quite as creative. But are you going to watch Grok's version of The Odyssey instead of paying money to

• 43:41David Pierce?

  go see Christopher Nolan's version of The Odyssey? A lot of people are spending a lot of money betting that you are. We talk about this all the time on the show. We are, we are dealing with this as people, as journalists, as, as just the internet at large is going through this in such a big way. Shell Game does a really great job of diving into how all of this works and how it all makes us feel. Shell Game is one of those shows that doesn't have that many episodes. He does pretty tight seasons as they go, so you can just blast through it in like an afternoon or a long drive if you're so inclined. But I really like the show. Evan does this stuff differently on his shows than a lot of people do. It's, it's really fun to listen to, even if this is the kind of thing you're steeped in anyway. So Shell Game, it's a podcast. I think you'll like it.

• 44:23David Pierce?

  And if you have other shows in this vein, dealing with this kind of stuff that you want to recommend, I'm all ears. I am frankly in the market for some new tech podcasts, so get at me. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you again to Jen for being here, and thank you as always for watching and listening. If you have thoughts, feedback, questions, if you're going to buy one of these Echo devices, I want to know all about it. Email us, [email protected], call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. And as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support everything we're doing here at The Verge is to subscribe to The Verge. Theverge.com/subscribe. You get all of our podcasts ad-free, including this one. You get all of our exclusive newsletters, including my one installer, where Shell Game is going to be this week. You get everything we're doing. Theverge.com/subscribe. Thank you in advance. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 45:07David Pierce?

  The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchak. See you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

• 45:16Speaker 00

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• 46:00Speaker 02

  I'm Josh Muccio, host of The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. For our sweet season 16, we're giving you more of what you love and less of what you don't.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  I definitely start to blank out when we're talking about like middleware AI wrappers.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Software is out. Actual cool stuff is in. We've got consumer brands.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  We're building 8Sleep for daytime.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Hardware that helps blind people see.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  They kept asking for middle finger. Next thing we knew, we had like 10 students running around flipping each other off.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  We've got deep tech to change the weather.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  Our big vision is to make it rain and snow on demand. What if you wanted to not make it rain somewhere else?

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Like, one day, we're just like, screw Arizona. And dairy?

• 46:47Speaker 03

  I never imagined my life journey would be milk.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Season 16 of The Pitch is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This season is presented by Engine.

• 46:57Speaker 05

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