Look Up Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home In My Bag Safety Net Versus Trending Now Say More Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable All Series Based in New York City, Miller Kern is the Deputy Editor of Shopping and Reviews at Mashable, where she writes and edits reviews, roundups, deals, and news stories about tech products, including headphones, skincare devices, laptops, sex toys, e-readers, robot vacuums, and more. She's been covering all things shopping and tech, including shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, for Mashable since 2019. Miller can tell you which products are actually worth your money. She also explores trends in the shopping sphere, such as dupes and viral TikTok moments . All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

The new Echo Studio also gets a camera, and the Echo Show 16 debuts an AI-generated Alexa interface. Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president of Devices and Alexa, says a couple hundred million people now use Alexa+, the revamped version of the decade-old voice assistant, on its Echo devices . He says people talk to Alexa+ two to three times more than before its AI glow-up, cook with it five times more, listen to music three times more, and create routines twice as much. To keep that momentum going, Amazon has new Echo products to deliver a richer Alexa+ experience, including minor refreshes on existing hardware and entirely new categories. Announced Wednesday and available for purchase now, they include the Echo Dot ($100), Echo Studio With Home Camera ($250), Echo Show 16 ($500), Echo Time ($200), and the first Alexa Photo Frame ($200) .

Amazon has released digital photo frames in the past, but this latest one is its first photo frame that comes with built-in Alexa. The appropriately named Alexa Photo Frame features a 10-inch high-definition anti-glare touchscreen set against soft-white matting and real wood to make it look like an ordinary photo frame at first glance. Its display has a semi-matte and anti-glare finish to make images look like actual prints rather than digital photos. It also senses ambient lighting levels so it can automatically adjust the screen brightness. The frame takes images from Amazon Photos, which you can use for free photo storage if you're a Prime member.

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. In 2025, the conglomerate launched Alexa, an upgraded version of its famous assistant, now powered by generative AI. Built on large language models from Anthropic and Amazon's AI suite, Amazon Nova, Amazon's latest assistant is being touted as smarter, more conversational, capable of handling more complex interactions and offering a more tailored experience than previous versions. From managing your home to acting as your personalized shopping assistant, Amazon claims Alexa is "able to orchestrate across tens of thousands of services and devices," which the company says, to its knowledge, "has never been done at this scale." You can access Amazon's LLM-powered assistant through three main avenues.

Of course, the most straightforward way to eliminate any eavesdropping Alexa concerns is to simply mute your device's microphone. For most Alexa devices made by Amazon (the Echo lineup), the button to do so is located on the top of the device and looks like a microphone with a slash through it. Once you press it, you'll know the microphone is muted by the red light displayed on the Echo device. It's a bit antithetical to how the device is designed to be used, but if you don't mind manually turning the microphone on and off each time you want to ask Alexa something, it's an easy fix for privacy concerns. If you still want to be able to call out to Alexa without fiddling with a button each time, you can adjust your recording settings for extra data protection.

Your Amazon Echo's light ring is a valuable information hub. And while most users are familiar with the recognizable blue ring, many don't realize that the light ring can display nine different color notifications, some of which are intended to grab your attention. If you see a flashing yellow ring around your Echo device, don't panic: a yellow light emanating in slow bursts every few seconds means that Alexa has a message or notification it would like to share with you. Introduced in 2017, this notification system transforms your Echo into a proactive assistant, capable of alerting you to everything from breaking news and calendar reminders to notifying you when Amazon has shipped your latest package. It is also useful for taking advantage of some of Alexa's more advanced features, such as Alexa for Shopping's price-drop alert tool.

If your Alexa doesn't seem to understand your voice, try setting up a Voice ID: Select Account Management and select your profile. Select Voice ID and follow the instructions. You can also say, "Alexa, learn my voice" to the same effect. If your Alexa's long-winded responses have become a bother, there are a couple of different methods you can try: Brief Mode and changing her personality type to Brief. The latter is one of several Alexa personality settings and will edit out things like filler statements while still speaking to you.

Amazon is rumored to be making a smartphone, and the Alexa-powered experiences on its new tablets give us a taste of what might come if that happens. Is Amazon making a smartphone? A Reuters report from earlier this year revealed details about a device codenamed Transformer under development, with Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant as the focus of the experience. With Amazon announcing a complete rebrand of its tablet line on Thursday --killing the cheap Fire Tablets and replacing them with premium Alexa Tablets that finally run Android with access to the Google Play Store--we now have a blueprint for what an Android-powered Amazon phone could look like. Amazon's souped-up Alexa+ assistant is front and center on the tablets.

Starting in November, Fire TV users in the US will get access to new Alexa experiences on their TV interface and the mobile app. They will feature a new hub for the AI-powered assistant, with personalized prompt suggestions based on their history. Alexa will be updated with reasoning capabilities, enabling it to answer more complex questions. It will be able to draw from the user's subscriptions, watch history and even real-world current affairs. For instance, it can answer questions like "Alexa, find shows that were nominated for the recent Emmys but got snubbed" or "Alexa, show me MCU films based on their in-universe timeline order."

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series All of these devices are compatible with the new AI-powered Alexa+. Ashley Keegan is a freelance contributor to Mashable. Stacia Datskovska is an NYU journalism major (graduating this December). Her work has appeared in USA Today, Boston Globe, Teen Vogue, HuffPost, Bustle, and more. When she's not writing something or other, Stacia can be spotted crying over poetry, making a home-cooked meal, or walking on an NYC pier. Samantha Mangino, is an e-reader expert. She's tested all the Kindle and Kobo e-readers, diving into the buzziest models. Her love of reading extends beyond the e-reader beat, covering books and authors, too. In the tech space, she covers tablets, smart rings, and headphones.