Amazon held its annual fall event on 28 September, this time behind closed doors, with no media in the room.
But that didn't stop Amazon announcing a full range of updates, devices and new services, across a full range of products.
There was a lot announced, from updates to the Echo Show, through to a domestic robot called Astro. Yes, you read that right, Amazon has made a robot.
Everything announced at the Amazon event
Amazon Smart Thermostat
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Amazon wants to help you control your home heating by making smart thermostats more affordable – and at $59.99, the Smart Thermostat is certainly cheap. It's built by Honeywell, so you know it's going to work with everything – and of course you can control it with Alexa.
Echo Show 15
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Taking the Echo Show into a new direction, Amazon announced a new wall-mounted version called the Echo Show 15, with a 15.6-inch display. This can be mounted vertically or horizonally, gives you all of Alexa's skills, has a camera for calling, as well as a custom UI better designed to revolve around your family – including sticky notes so you can leave reminders for your family.
It looks like sticky notes and the family calendar feature will be rolling out to other Echo Show models – with visual ID allowing the Echo Show to recognise you can show your personal calendar.
Amazon Kids+
Amazon Kids+ is getting a whole range of additional content as Amazon looks to expand its subscription offerings.
Hey Disney
Amazon is teaming up with Disney and that's resulted in Hey Disney, a Disney-based companion for the Echo Show, which you'll be able to find in rooms at Disney resorts. This will give a twist on Amazon's useful Echo Show, and unlocking access to Disney content, as well as being a voice assistant for for your hotel room. There's also a Mickey mount.
Amazon Glow
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Sticking with kids, Amazon has unveiled a new interactive experience for kids based around a new device called Glow. Glow integrates an 8-inch display, camera and a projector, allowing it to project playscapes onto a surface. This will allow families to interact, the protection meaning that kids can play, while family away from home can interact via the camera. It's basically remote play time.
Halo View
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Halo View is an evolution of Amazon's Halo tracker, but now with a display, meaning it can offer more interaction and feedback. While the new fitness tracker will appeal to some, there's an expansion of Amazon's fitness offering from Halo, with subscribers getting access to Halo Fitness – a little like Apple's Fitness+ with guided workouts – as well as Halo Nutrition, which is a meal plan – which can be powered by your Amazon shopping list.
Ring Always Home Cam
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We'd saw Ring's Always Home Cam announced, the drone camera for your home, announced in 2020, but it's actually opening up for orders. Well, it will be an invite list, but this futuristic flying camera will soon be a reality in homes.
Ring Alarm Pro
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Sticking with home security, there's the Ring Alarm Pro which is now integrated with Eero to ensure there's always a good connection. This modular system will secure your home, while offering a new feature called Ring Edge – which is the ability to store all the captured video locally, rather than send it to the cloud.
Ring also announced package detection and custom event alerts, using trained AI, which is coming to a couple of Ring devices. There's also the Ring Virtual Security Guard, which is a monitored subsciption service where someone else can check your Ring alerts to see if there's a problem – and then take action, like talk to the intruders.
Amazon Astro
Finally we come to Amazon's robot – Astro. It might look like a vacuum cleaner with a tablet stuck to it, but it's not actually a vacuum cleaner. It uses many of the same skills to be able to autonomously navigate your home, however. It's sort of a roaming home companion, able to patrol your home and give you a live view, make video calls and it even has an extendable camera, so it can look up at higher objects – like to see if you turned off the stove.
What it will practially do remains something of a mystery, but it does have a cup holder on the back, so it can at least deliver beer. That's got to be worth $999.
If you'd like to watch the entire event, Amazon has uploaded it in full, which you can view below.
