Amazon has unveiled new changes coming to its all-purpose wall-mounted display, the 8-inch Echo Hub ($180). The Hub, focused on smart home control, now has new graphics and significantly deeper customization, Amazon announced Thursday.
During normal operation, the Echo Hub usually shows controls for the devices you use the most, including those that use Matter, Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth connections (as long as they work with Alexa). But you can also move these tiles around, enlarge or shrink them, and you can choose specific devices to add to the home screen for easier access.
A representative from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
While devices are now grouped automatically by room and function, you can manually create your own groups to add a series of controls to. That includes routines that you may have previously set up.
Another innovation adds more granular controls, which is more useful than it may sound. For example, you can now access supported smart light bulbs, allowing you to dim them from 1% to 100% and to choose specific colors.
Echo Hubs can now give in-depth video information and answers with Alexa Plus and Ring AI.
If you use Alexa Plus (free with Amazon Prime or $20 per month) and have a Ring AI subscription for Ring security cameras, the Echo Hub can also provide a summary of camera events and video clips of the relevant actions (for example, delivered packages) for up to four feeds at the same time. You can also search through existing security videos directly on the Hub with Alexa voice commands.
These sound like convenient changes for the Echo Hub, but I’d look forward to them coming to Echo Show devices like mine, too. Echo Shows have traditionally had a broader focus than smart home controls, like showing video calls or TV shows, but this new customizable screen sounds better than the news and ads my Show has instead. Hopefully, Amazon will push similar features to other Echo devices.
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