Amazon’s Stylish Echo Pop Leads New Alexa Speaker Lineup – CNET [CNET]

May 18, 2023 Ty Pendlebury technology

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The $40 Echo Pop joins an updated Show 5 and a budget set of Echo Buds.

Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.

Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials

Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.

Amazon’s growing its Alexa-powered Echo smart device lineup with the new Echo Pop smart speaker, a budget set of Echo Buds and an upgraded Echo Show 5 smart display, the company announced Wednesday.

Amazon’s new Echo Pop is a $40 Alexa smart speaker featuring a semispherical design, similar to the Harman Kardon Onyx. The speaker is designed for smaller rooms and comes in a range of colors, including lavender and teal. Like the other Alexa speakers announced today, the Pop features Amazon’s AZ2 Neural Edge processor for a claimed 20% speed increase, while it can also extend a home mesh network with Eero capability built in.

Read More: Amazon Echo’s Hidden Features

Amazon’s SVP Rohit Prasad told CNET that the number of purchases made on Alexa devices had increased by 40% in the past year, and that “the greater percentage of that was on devices with a screen.”

echo-show-5-shot-4 — Amazon bumped up the sound quality for its latest Echo smart display.

Amazon

To that end, Amazon introduced an upgraded $90 Echo Show 5 with a redesigned speaker system for better clarity and bass. The Alexa-powered smart display also has an improved microphone array onboard, and comes in pale blue, charcoal black and white. The $100 Echo Show 5 Kids variation has the same tweaks and also offers a new space-themed design.

Lastly, the $50 Echo Buds true-wireless earbuds are a stripped-down version of the existing $120 Echo Buds, without active noise canceling. They do have the same 20-hour battery life, however. The design is more AirPod-like, with long stems, than the Echo Buds, and Amazon says the fit is more comfortable than before.

echo-buds-shot-3 — The $50 Echo Buds.

Amazon

Amazon leads both Google and Apple with sales of its smart devices, which also includes the Echo Dot. The company faces increasing competition from Google, though, which just introduced its own hybrid smart display, the Pixel Tablet.

The Echo Pop, Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 5 Kids are expected to start shipping on May 31, and the Echo Buds on June 7.

Read More: 4 Risky Spots to Put Your Echo