Amazon's new $99 mainline Echo is all about improving the music listening experience. It's basically an Echo Plus in new clothes. Under the hood are the same core audio features, including neodymium drivers and a 3-inch woofer. It should have better frequency response, especially on the low end, but Amazon also claims the mids and highs are clearer. We'll have to wait to test it outside the chaos of a press event though, to know for sure.
On the outside, there's a clean fabric cover that, not going to lie, looks a bit like a Homepod when slapped on the new design. But people will probably appreciate that there's a new color option. In addition to charcoal, sandstone and heather gray, there's now twilight blue. Plus, that fabric cover is much better looking than the old-school utilitarian look of the first Echo.
We don't have all the details just yet about the new Echo. (Amazon is just blowing through product announcements today and barely scratching the surface on all of them.) But we do know that one new feature is coming: Guest Connect. This just means that if you walk into a friend's house or an Airbnb and there's an Echo on the shelf, you can quickly sign in by saying "Alexa, connect my account", to get all your playlists, etc... on the device. Connecting requires that you authenticate on both ends, and we hope there's a simple way to disconnect, but Amazon didn't get into too many details.
Follow all the latest news from Amazon's 2019 hardware event here!
