The screen you asked for, at a price you didn’t
Amazon announced the Echo Show 16 today, and it is, by every measure The Verge’s hands-on could apply, a genuinely good device. A 16-inch full HD screen with 10% more viewing area than the Echo Show 15, in a frame nearly 40% thinner. A 13-megapixel camera with night vision — a first for an Echo Show — that can recognize you from 17 feet away. Eight micro woofers and two tweeters. The full Fire TV experience built in, with a redesigned remote in the box.
It costs $499.99. The Nanomatte anti-glare version costs $569.99. It is available to preorder now, with $100 off, and it will ship later this year — Amazon has not said exactly when.
But the price is not the most interesting number in the announcement. The most interesting number is the one Amazon hasn’t announced at all: what it will cost owners of older Echo Shows to get the feature the new device is built around.
Finally, a homescreen you can choose
The Echo Show 16’s signature feature is called Screen Styles, and it is the thing Echo Show owners have been asking for. Three customizable homescreens — a family organizer, a smart home dashboard with the new Alexa Home Map, or a digital photo frame — that can stay on all the time. A customizable favorites bar for pinning the capabilities you use most. A Cooking Library for recipes. The Verge put it plainly: this is “the customization users have been asking for.”
It matters because the smart display has always had an identity problem. As The Verge’s reviewer put it, smart displays have often felt like solutions looking for a problem, promising too many things but rarely doing any very well. A screen that shows you what you want, when you want it — your calendar, your lights, your photos — is the version of the idea that finally makes sense as a household object rather than a gadget auditioning for a job.
Amazon clearly agrees. Echo Show is the company’s fastest-growing Echo product line, up more than 25% year over year. The screen, Amazon argues, becomes more important as Alexa becomes more capable: conversations now unfold as interactive Cards you can revisit across devices, the Alexa app, and Alexa.com, and a “next best actions” feature makes proactive suggestions based on what you’ve been talking about. The rebuilt Alexa Home Map renders your home in 3D, updates in real time as you toggle devices, and can tap into exterior Ring cameras.
The catch for existing owners
Here is the part that matters for existing owners. The new interface and features will eventually come to all current Echo Show devices, Amazon says, though it has shared no timeline. But the customizable homescreens — the feature the whole device is built around — will require a subscription on older devices. Aidan Marcuss, Amazon’s incoming vice president of Alexa and Echo, confirmed it to The Verge. Included free on the Show 16. A paid subscription on the Shows people already own. The price of that subscription has not been confirmed.
That is the story behind the story. Amazon finally built the Echo Show its customers have been asking for — and the customers who already bought into the line will pay a subscription for the privilege of catching up. The $500 device is the one where the fix costs nothing extra.
To be fair, there is a reasonable version of this. Charging for new software features on older hardware is standard practice across the industry, and Amazon is bringing the rest of the new interface to current Shows without charging for it. The Show 16 is also a genuine hardware rebuild — thinner, a better camera, better audio, a MediaTek processor rather than Amazon’s AZ3 chip — Panos Panay said of the shared development work, ‘A lot of the same work went into this as the tablet’ — so the price reflects new hardware, not merely a software unlock. And the subscription may turn out to be modest when Amazon finally names a price.
But the shape of the thing is hard to miss. The customization Echo owners have been asking for arrives free on the $500 device and as a recurring charge on every other one. Amazon has not said what the subscription costs, or when it starts, or what exactly it covers beyond the homescreens. For people with an Echo Show already on their wall or kitchen counter, the announcement reads less like an upgrade path than a toll booth appearing on a road they already paid to drive on.
The ads, separately
There is a second change worth noting on its own terms, because it is a separate fact and should not be confused with the subscription. The Echo Show 16 lets you turn off the Alexa Recommendations screen — the rotating screen that shows full-screen display ads. Marcuss confirmed the ads will appear only on that screen, not on any other homescreen. Whether owners of older Shows can switch the ads off without paying is not something the available evidence establishes; it is an open question, and it should stay one until Amazon says otherwise.
What is established is that the ad screen was a fixture of the current Echo Show experience, and that the new device gives you a switch for it. That is a real improvement, and it is worth saying so plainly. It is also worth saying plainly that it is not the same thing as the subscription gate on homescreens, and the two should not be merged into a single grievance.
Is the Echo Show 16 worth $500?
The comparison math is not kind. The Show 16 costs double the $250 Echo Show 11 and $200 more than Apple’s new HomeView smart display. It costs the same $499 as the Echo Show 21, in a thinner body with slimmer bezels. The optional stands — $69.99 for a static one, $124.99 for swivel-and-tilt — push the real cost higher still, and on a stand the device starts to resemble a small iMac.
And yet The Verge’s hands-on verdict was genuinely warm: Amazon may have solved the smart display’s problem and delivered a genuinely useful device. The question The Verge left open is the one that matters: whether it is a solution worth spending $500 on.
That question has two answers. For the buyer walking into the $500 device, the customization is included, the ads can be switched off, and the hardware is the best Amazon has put in a smart display. For the owner of the device already on the wall, the same customization is a subscription with a price Amazon hasn’t named. The Echo Show 16 is the screen Echo owners asked for. Whether they get it free or pay for it depends entirely on which Echo they already own.
