Emerging Technologies

Amazon's new Echo line prices Alexa+ as a premium product. The Echo Dot now costs $99.99.

2 min read

Flat mid-century-style illustration of generic smart home devices on a wooden shelf, including a smart display, an alarm clock, a photo frame and two speakers, each with a blank price tag beneath a voice wave, for Amazon's premium-priced Alexa+ Echo hardware.

Amazon's fall Echo line, unveiled in New York, starts at $99.99 for the Echo Dot and reaches $569.99 for an Echo Show 16. The pricing positions Alexa+ hardware as premium.

In brief

Amazon unveiled five Alexa+ devices on 28 October at a media event in New York, WIRED reported. Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president of Devices and Alexa, told WIRED that "a couple hundred million" people now use Alexa+ on Echo devices. He said that as conversations with Alexa+ get deeper, the devices need to be premium.

The prices reflect that. WIRED notes the Echo Dot, once a $50 entry speaker, now starts at about $100. WIRED adds that this is higher than the prices Amazon raised this summer on existing devices, which it blamed on a memory shortage. Panay also told WIRED that Amazon has sold more than 100 million Echo Dots.

The US prices

All prices below come from Amazon's own announcements.

  • Echo Show 16: $499.99, or $569.99 with the Nanomatte anti-glare display. Preorders are open with $100 off, and shipping begins later this year.
  • Echo Time: $199.99. This is a camera-free smart alarm clock. A kids' version starts at $209.99.
  • Alexa Photo Frame: $199.99 in black, $229.00 in birch or walnut. It includes 90 days of Alexa+.
  • Echo Studio with Home Camera: $249.99. The standard Echo Studio stays at $219.99.
  • Echo Dot: $99.99. It now has a built-in smart home hub and an eero Wi-Fi extender.

Amazon says certain features require Alexa+, which is included with Prime.

Why the pricing matters

The cheapest way into Amazon's new lineup is now the $99.99 Dot. A camera adds $30 to the Studio. A matte screen adds $70 to the Show 16. The subscription is bundled with Prime, so Amazon earns on the hardware. Buyers are paying more for devices designed to show off Alexa+ in a home, not just to play music.

For households and offices, the question is whether those features justify the price. The camera, the sleep sensing and the generated on-screen answers are new. The voice speaker people already own is not.

Sources and scope

The Alexa+ user figure is Panay's own claim, which ByteNib could not independently check. WIRED gave $550 for the Nanomatte Show 16; this article uses Amazon's $569.99. The analysis is ByteNib editorial analysis. This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance and edited under ByteNib's editorial standards.

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