Amazon refreshes Alexa, three Echo Shows in time for Prime Day

Three new smart displays from Amazon just blipped into existence and caught us completely by surprise. We're talking about all of it right now. The new smart displays are an upgraded echo show 8 and upgraded echo show 5 and an all new echo show 5 kids edition. All of them are available for pre-order as of today. They're going to be available in early June. And Amazon is launching new features for their digital assistant alongside the smart displays. This includes new proactive routines. So when it senses you enter the room, it can turn on the lights. New features for video calls that include confetti and reactions. We're gonna talk about each of the smart displays in turn, then the Amazon assistant stuff that affects all of it. Here we go. [MUSIC] Let's start with the second gen echo show eight. It's going to be $130. It's going to have a 13 megapixel camera which is a huge upgrade. The old show eight had a one megapixel camera and that new camera is going to be able to pan and tilt to follow the action when you're on video calls. It's going to have a fancy new processor to help it keep up with all of the action. And it's gonna come in a couple of colors. It looks exactly the same as the old showing. So the bells and whistles are on the inside, but it also has new adaptive screen brightness to make pictures show better. And it's priced the same as the old model, so. Mean I'll take an upgrade. The new echo show five is 85 bucks which is a drop from the $90 old one, and it has a fancy new camera with double the mega pixels of the old one. The old one had a one megapixel camera. This one has a two megapixel cameras. So yeah, double the megapixels, is very exciting and it looks just like the old one. Really there's not that much different here at all. They added a new color, and they changed some of the internal hardware. Expect more of the same, with a new level of polish. The echo show five kids edition, is brand new. New which you can tell because they added the word kids there at the end. It's the echo show five, but it has kid friendly clack faces and alarms with silly voices. It also comes with access to Amazon's kids plus subscription service, which starts at $3 a month and includes all kinds of energy Attainment and educational material. In addition to all that the kids edition will offer homework help and your child will be able to make video calls on the kids edition, but only to pre approved contacts and in a nice touch. It comes with a two year worry A free warranty. So no matter how the device breaks in the first two years, you'll be able to send it back and get a new one. I like that. Now let's dive into the new features for Amazon's digital assistant. These will obviously roll out to all of the echo shows including existing products like the echo show 10. So for those video calls, I mentioned new digital reactions. So for voice and video calls, you'll be able to play confetti and have smiley faces and bells and whistles and yada, yada, yada. You also be able to do augmented In reality stuff to digitally insert yourself over backgrounds like your favorite painting, Amazon's also updating routines to make them a bit more proactive. Previously, routines could trigger based on time of day, or if you turned off a light, it could change the temperature of your thermostat. Now because some of these devices can sense your Presence. When you enter a room it might be able to trigger your good night routine and Amazon's digital assistant is soon going to be able to recognize more sounds like snoring or a. Baby crying. So one of the examples of new routines is when it hears snoring, it might be able to raise the volume of your white noise machine to drown that out and help you stay asleep. Amazon's also gonna have a new shared home screen on the show. So if your family and friends take pictures, they'll be able to share it with you and those pictures will automatically be able to Show up in a photo display on your show. Kind of cool. You'll also be able to see more stuff on screen like your workout history and music recommendations, and you'll be able to check on the cameras of your Echo shows remotely but all of them are gonna Gotta have a physical shutter. If that feature makes you worried about privacy. You can pre order any of these shows now they launched next month in June. One thing to keep an eye out for, they're reasonably priced. But later in June, is Prime Day when Amazon has sales on friggin everything. So they're reasonably priced and the chances of there being a sale on these brand new shows are maybe small. But if you can wait a couple of extra weeks to see might be worth a gamble. In the meantime, if you enjoyed the video, please hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to cnet's YouTube channel for more. We're gonna review them as soon as we get our hands on them. And thank you for watching.