Amazon has a new style of smart screen for Australia, as the Echo Show 10 rocks up to move with you.
Even though the world of smart screens have been around for a few years now, the idea is still relatively new to most people. Much like a smart speaker, it’s something you can talk to and command your home, turning on lights, playing music, and getting news, recipes, videos, and more.
But even though it’s a relatively new concept — and a great prompt for people who feel uncomfortable talking randomly to a speaker — the idea has more or less stayed the same: a small touchscreen mounted to a speaker that stays put.
Last year, Amazon started to change that with a bit of imagination, announcing a new variation of the Echo Show 10 inch, with a motorised design that allowed the screen to rotate with you, changing its position so that you could see it as you moved about the place. It’s different from the standard Echo speaker, and means you didn’t necessarily need to leave the smart screen in one place only to not see it from others, such as leaving it in the corner of your kitchen, only to not see it as you moved about cooking or grabbing food from the fridge.
This week, that new take on the smart screen is out, as the Echo Show 10 arrives in Australia, offering a 10 inch high definition screen, silent motor, and a 13 megapixel camera to let you talk to people over the screen, which is one of the main reasons that motor is there: to keep you centred while you talk on video to friends and family.
Much like Amazon’s other smart speakers, it will support the Alexa smart assistant, meaning you can command it to do things, such as play music or order food, though you can turn off the microphone and camera if you want.
However the screen can also be used with family photos, acting like a digital photo frame at points, too, and there’s support for other smart accessories, thanks to built-in support for the Zigbee hub technology.
One thing Australians don’t get, however, is support for Amazon Photo Family Vault, which isn’t yet supported locally. That means that while Australians can upload photos to their Amazon Photos account and app, and use those photos on the Echo Show, they can’t share their photo library with friends and family, much like how Amazon subscribers in the US can.
Unfortunately, it means that while a Google Nest Hub smart display can be used as a remotely updated photo frame, the Amazon Echo show models can’t yet be used like that in Australia, at least until that functionality rolls out.
“The internationalisation of all our products and features is incredibly important. We are working hard to make the Amazon Family Vault available everywhere our customers want it,” said a spokesperson for Amazon in Australia, but didn’t have anything to share regarding the feature being rolled out in Australia.
Without this features, the Echo Show 10 can still be used for your personal family photos, and for other things too, with the Amazon Echo Show 10 arriving in Australia at Amazon and JB HiFi for $399 this week.
