At its recent fall hardware event, Washington-based Amazon announced a new smart home product that aims to make smart home management easier for users.
The new device is meant to serve as a central hub for all your smart home operations and is aptly named the Echo Hub.
The tablet-like Echo Hub features an 8-inch touchscreen and is designed to be mounted on a wall, though it can also be placed on a table with a stand. It lets you control and engage with all your smart home gadgets, including allowing you to see live video feeds from your security cameras, adjust the volume of your Echo speakers, arm your security system and more.
Also new in smart home is Echo Hub, a new wall-mountable control panel powered by @alexa99 that allows you to (literally) tap 👇 in to control all of your smart home devices in one nifty place. Time to power-up allll of your routines. pic.twitter.com/a5iMPHiFnW
— Amazon (@amazon) September 20, 2023
Just like a regular Echo device, you can control the Echo Hub and connected gadgets with your voice or the touchscreen display. You can also use the Hub as a regular Echo device to play music, set reminders, look up recipes and more.
One of the more interesting features coming to the Echo Hub is support for Map View, a feature that makes a digital floor plan of your house and controls your devices on a room-by-room basis. You can map your house with the Alexa app and a smartphone with LiDAR. Smartphones with LiDAR include iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max, and the iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max.
According to Amazon, the Echo Hub will support all the major smart home protocols, including Matter and Thread, and it works with over 140,000 compatible devices.
Unlike other Echo devices like the Echo Show 15, which I’ve found works great as a central smart home hub, the Echo Hub does not feature a camera. Instead, it relies on IR sensors to detect when someone is nearby. This also means that the Echo Hub can not be used for video calls like the Echo Show 15.
The Echo Hub will go on sale later this year for $239.99.
For all of our stories from Amazon’s keynote, follow this link.
Image credit: Amazon
Source: Amazon
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