Amazon is getting deeper involved in the smart home space with its first-ever home control panel, the Echo Hub. The control panel is designed for “simple and intuitive connected device management” and naturally, uses Alexa for personalized control.
Selling in Canada for $240, the Echo Hub is wall mountable (or place it on a counter, table, or shelf using the optional stand accessory), and easy to install. It consists of a thin 8-inch touch-enabled display with a customizable smart home dashboard. In this dashboard, you can group and manage multiple smart home devices and do things like arm a security system and view multiple camera feeds, start a routine (like turn on the lights and music), and organize widgets.
With Adaptive Content, Echo Hub uses infrared technology to detect when someone is nearby, and naturally transitions from a home screen with a clock, to the smart home control screen. The built-in hub supports Zigbee, Bluetooth, and Matter, making it compatible with thousands of smart home devices, including cameras, lights, locks, plugs, thermostats, speakers, and more.
Echo Hub can connect to the internet wirelessly, or via ethernet with a compatible power-over-ethernet (PoE) adapter.
Echo Hub is built with multiple layers of privacy protection, including a mic off button and the ability to delete your voice recordings.
“Customers trust Alexa to help simplify their daily lives—they’re interacting with their personal AI tens of millions of times every hour,” says Daniel Rausch, Vice President of Alexa and Fire TV. “This new device offers customers even more ways to seamlessly manage everything, from day-to-day tasks to the thousands of smart home devices inside and outside the home, with Alexa. Echo Hub makes controlling a multitude of connected smart home devices simple.”
Echo Hub is $240 and will be available later this year: customers can sign up to be notified when pre-orders are available. Decorative frame accessories that can be placed on Echo Hub to customize the exterior are available in paintable white, light wood, and metallic for $20 ea., and the counter stand accessory is $30.