Amazon is kicking off the year with an Alexa+ chatbot, a redesigned Fire TV experience, and a brand new lifestyle TV.

With Alexa.com, you get a chatbot-like interface for the company’s revamped Alexa+ assistant. The website is designed to provide responses like you'd expect from ChatGPT or Gemini, while also allowing you to control your Alexa-enabled smart home devices. It is about bringing “the full power of Alexa+ right to your browser,” Amazon says.

Select Alexa+ Early Access customers already have access to the chatbot, but Amazon is now expanding that to everyone. You need a Prime membership to get early access; after that, Alexa+ is free for Prime members or $19.99 per month for those without a Prime membership.

In its press release, Amazon discusses several ways you can use Alexa.com. You can ask it for a dinner recipe, save it to your recipe library, and then pull it up for a quick glance on your Echo Show display while cooking. You can also ask the chatbot to add the ingredients to your shopping list or to your Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods cart before you begin.

Like other chatbots, Alexa.com can fetch information from uploaded documents and take action on those details. For example, it can add an event or appointment to your calendar and pull up a schedule on demand. You can also ask it to recall details from uploaded files, such as when your dog was last vaccinated.

The chat interface has a dedicated window for one of Alexa’s core tasks: managing smart home devices. The window lets you quickly check your security cameras, unlock the door, or adjust your lights and thermostats. Additionally, the chatbot can suggest shows and movies to watch on Fire TV and provide quick access to them.

Amazon is updating Fire TV’s user interface to make it “cleaner, faster, and better organized.” The company says the new design will help customers spend “less time searching, more time watching.”

The updated interface has a more modern look, with rounded corners, new color gradients, and improved spacing. You can now add 20 streaming apps to the home screen, up from six. Additionally, as you scroll through the dedicated tabs for movies, TV shows, sports, and news, you’ll now first see titles from the apps you have subscribed to.

Amazon is also adding a shortcut panel to let you access your most frequently used Fire TV controls more quickly. To bring it up, just long-press the Home button.

The new design will be available with an update on the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen), and Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series in February, before expanding to other Fire TV-enabled TVs, including those from Hisense, Insignia, Panasonic, and TCL, in the spring. The UI redesign will also roll out to the corresponding Fire TV mobile app.

Amazon Launches Its Own Frame TV Rival

Following LG, Amazon has launched a rival to Samsung’s The Frame lifestyle TV. These devices are designed to blend seamlessly with your home decor and transform your TV into a piece of art, rather than a black box, when not in use.

The Amazon Ember Artline is a 4K QLED TV that comes with a matte display and magnetically adjustable frames. To match your interiors, you can choose your frame from 10 different colors: ash, black oak, fig, graphite, matte white, midnight blue, pale gold, silver, teak, and walnut.

To choose your artwork, you can tap into Amazon Photos or the 2,000 curated pieces the company provides. You can also upload four pictures of your room to let Alexa+ recommend the best artwork for your screen.

The TV supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Wi-Fi 6. It also has far-field microphones, so you can talk to Alexa+ from anywhere in the room. Additionally, with its Omnisense technology, the TV automatically activates or deactivates the Ambient Experience whenever people enter or leave the room.

The Amazon Ember Artline goes on sale later this spring. It will be available in 55- and 65-inch models starting at $899, with one magnetic frame included for the price.

With the Ember Artline, Amazon is also rebranding its own TVs. “We’ve also had so much momentum with our line of Amazon smart TVs that we decided now was the time to give them their own name: Amazon Ember,” it says.

By: DocMemory
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