Amazon’s new Echo Studio gives Alexa+ an AI camera to see inside your home

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Amazon unveiled Echo Studio with Home Camera, available now for $250.
• Its camera can monitor a room or help Alexa answer questions about its view.
• More companies are adding all-seeing or all-hearing tech to their devices.

Amazon’s new Echo Studio with Home Camera does exactly what it sounds like: adds a camera to the premium smart speaker for home monitoring, visual assistance, and video calls. It’s available now for $250 and is another attempt by Amazon to see into more homes.

What can the Echo Studio with Home Camera do?

The camera serves as a security camera when you’re away and an all-seeing assistant while you’re in the room. Amazon said it gives Alexa+ “visual intelligence” to be able to see and do more. For example, the Echo Studio can explain the rules of a board game when it appears in the Studio’s view or help you order more of a product when you show it to the camera. It could help you buy more stuff from Amazon — how convenient.

Also: The Amazon Echo Dot Max is $30 off: Should you upgrade?

Later this year, Echo Studios and Amazon Fire TVs will gain compatibility, so you can use the Echo Studio’s camera to initiate video calls that cast on the TV.

The Echo Studio arrives with advanced room adaptation that melds sound to a space and to you — it gathers your distance from the speaker to lower or raise the volume as you move around, so you can hear the music at your desired volume regardless of your distance from the device.

Amazon

The new speakers are powered by Amazon’s AZ3 silicon chip, which helps Alexa pick up conversations more quickly and cuts background noise. Its on-device processing helps your conversations with Amazon’s robot sound a little less robotic.

Amazon’s Omnisense technology monitors a room’s conditions to adapt the room temperature and lighting. This will come in handy now that Amazon has made the Dot into a smart home hub of its own that can control other compatible devices around the home. This renders the Amazon Echo nearly obsolete as a standalone smart home hub.

What are the privacy concerns?

Tech companies keep releasing products with always-on recording and listening capabilities, to the discomfort of many users and privacy advocates.

In September, Apple unveiled two controversial always-listening features on its Apple Watch that capture the last few seconds of a conversation and display the transcript on the screen, as well as a feature that summarizes meetings. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are another recent subject of surveillance scrutiny. Because the glasses can record people in public without their knowledge, people have begun calling the Ray-Bans “pervert glasses.”

Also: I’m a fan of the Echo Show 11, even if it’s not perfect

And I’d be remiss not to mention Flock cameras: The traffic cameras are so unpopular they’ve become a bipartisan rallying cry against state surveillance.

People have raised concerns that these devices will listen or see into the most private parts of their lives and use that information to sell them more stuff — or misuse it altogether. A few years ago, Amazon’s own Ring employees were able to see through users’ cameras and into their homes. This resulted in a class-action lawsuit that left Amazon paying users $5 million in settlements.

Amazon

The Echo Studio with Home Camera includes a dedicated button that cuts power to the mics and camera, though using it would limit the device’s smart functionality. An LED indicates when the camera is streaming, but again, users can shut it off entirely with the mute button.

“The camera is not continuously on,” Amazon said in a statement to ZDNET. “It is only enabled when you’re using a feature that leverages the camera,” such as checking in through Live View, making video calls, or asking Alexa to look at something. In other words, you have to trigger the camera.

How quickly customers will buy this smart home camera and speaker, find use for it, and not be weirded out by surveillance remains to be seen.

How much does the Echo Studio with Home Camera cost?

The Echo Studio with Home Camera is available now for $250.

Nina Raemont

Editor, Wearables & Health Tech

Nina Raemont is ZDNET's Health and Wearables Editor based in New York City. She is constantly testing out health trackers and always has at least two (but normally three) around her fingers or wrist. She was formerly an Associate Writer for CNET. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. In her spare time, she's in her kitchen, trying a new baking recipe. See full bio