Amazon’s Full-On Smart Home Assault: All The Highlights
Amazon released a huge number of smart home products today, including two robots for home security, a Nest competitor, more Echo devices, and a perfect device for Covid-times connection with friends and family. Plus there’s an updated fitness tracker, a partnership with TikTok, entertainment from Sling, and more.
And yes, that includes ways to chat with Han Solo or Chewbacca from Star Wars or Woody from Toy Story on your Amazon Echo devices.
Here are the highlights.
Amazon released no fewer than seven devices for home security, including a flying drone and a rolling robot.
- Astro: a rolling home security robot. Astro rolls around your home, checks for trouble, and sends you video when needed. Astro can investigate noises, and it can proactively patrol your home on a schedule. Astro is $1500, but is available as a Day 1 edition for $1,000 including a six-month trial of Ring Protect Pro.
- Ring Always Home Cam: a flying home security drone. Announced almost a year ago today, this is the futuristic flying drone security guard for your home. Like Astro, Ring Always will fly around your home, investigate noises, send you video, check on disturbances, and more. Available by invitation only for now, so clearly still in beta mode. Ring Always had an intro price of $250 last year, and Amazon hasn’t updated that in this new announcement.
- Ring Alarm Pro: a home security system. Amazon says this is “first-of-its-kind home security system that combines protection against break-ins, floods, fires, and online threats with the reliable connectivity of a built-in eero Wi-Fi 6 router.” In other words, it does everything, and connects all the drones, alarms, smart doorbells around your house into one comprehensive system to protect your home against burglars as well as natural disasters. Ring Alarm Pro starts at $250, and presumably goes up from their for larger homes.
- Ring Video Doorbell: wired or wireless video doorbell. Competing with Google’s Nest doorbells, Ring Video Doorbell has a battery so doesn’t need a wired connection. It can also be paired with both a Blink Floodlight Camera for “700 lumens of motion-triggered lighting” and the Blink Solar Panel so you never have to recharge it. This is seriously cheap at just $50, putting pressure on competitors.
- Ring Jobsite Security: Ring cameras on the jobsite. It’s the Ring video doorbell, but it’s not a doorbell. Put it on your building, in your job site, or wherever to remotely monitor what’s going on. Available via Home Depot for $400 and up.
- Virtual Security Guard: a subscription for remote monitoring. If you still want a security service monitoring your system, Amazon’s enabling this via what will eventually be multiple security providers. U.S.-only for now, and the first third-party service is Rapid Response.
- Custom Event Alerts: configurable alerts when things happen at your home. Now you know when a package arrives, a suspicious person is poking around your house, deer come into the front yard, or the garage door was left open. Uses “computer vision-based custom smart alerts” to see, understand, and communicate to you.
Amazon also released a number of products for family connection and coordination: between five and seven depending on how you count.
They include:
- Echo Show 15: “the digital heart of your home.” Echo Show 15 is a largish Echo for your kitchen or family meeting spot to “help you stay organized, connected, and entertained.” You can do all kinds of Echo-y things with it like call friends and family, share calendars and photos, organize, and stream TV to it. It’s 1080p, 15.6”, and will cost $250.
- Amazon Glow, a games and activities at-a-distance connector. This is perhaps the most innovative product, and reminiscent of devices from China for kids. It’s a video communicator, but it also beams a 19” touch-sensitive projected space for shared activities: puzzles, board games, drawing, and more. Amazon Glow will come with special play boards that interact with the beamed space and one year of Amazon Kids+ with games, visual arts activities, and animated books. It’s an invite-only device for now at $250.
- Alexa Together, an elder-care subscription. Alexa Together offers Alexa-based communication and connectivity with a 24/7 helpline and fall detection. It comes with option remote assist for set-up, and is built around Care Hub, a set of services for elders in the Alexa app that help loved ones know they’re safe. Alexa Together is launching later this year for $20/month.
- Amazon Kids, content, Hey Disney, Calendar, Notes, and more. Amazon also released a number of smaller products and features including a partnership with Disney so you can say “Hey Disney” instead of “Hey Alexa” and engage with Star Wars and Pixar characters, a household calendar, shared sticky notes, and other features.
What else?
Amazon also announced a smart thermostat for just $60, creatively named the Amazon Smart Thermostat. It’s simpler than Nest from Google and other competing products but it’s cheap, it’s smart, and it integrates into Amazon’s smart home galaxy of products and services. And Amazon announced partnerships with Sling TV and TikTok to watch shows and get entertained on your Echo Show devices. If that’s not all enough, there’s also Halo View, an updated fitness tracker with an AMOLED color display for $70.
Add it all up, and it’s a massive release of a lot of new smart products.
The upshot is clear: you can have a smart Amazon home, a smart Google home, a smart Apple home, or some combination of other services that you cobble together. But increasingly, you’re going to have to choose, like you do with a computing platform or a mobile device, where your loyalties lie. And increasingly that choice has a lot to do with which wearables you prefer and what companies you trust with your data.
The easiest option, even if perhaps not the best, is going to be to pick one tech giant’s vision of a smart world and live in it. Amazon’s making a strong case that it can handle all your needs and aggregate all your home security and control under one roof, in one app, with one platform.
We’ll have to see how Google and Apple respond because right now they’re getting out-innovated and look slow in comparison.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/09/28/amazons-full-on-smart-home-assault-all-the-highlights/?sh=5ea3f3f16576
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