There’s nothing new about using Alexa to control your smart home, but the Echo Hub that Amazon announced today is the first Echo device to be a dedicated smart home control panel, featuring an 8-inch touchscreen display.
The Echo Hub, $179.99, looks like an Echo Show, but it’s much thinner and can be either mounted to the wall or set on a countertop or table with a stand. While it can operate over Wi-Fi, it’s the first Echo device that can be powered by either an AC adapter or power-over-ethernet (PoE) via USB-C. As such, it makes the Echo Hub a much stronger competitor to professionally installed smart home systems.
In addition to Wi-Fi, the Echo Hub has Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth LE, and Amazon Sidewalk radios onboard, and it can operate as both a Thread border router and a Matter controller. Alexa is onboard, of course, with a speaker and microphone array. Unlike an Echo Show, however, there is no camera; what it has instead is an infrared sensor that detects when you approach and wakes the panel up.
The panel will display widgets for typical smart home devices, including cameras, thermostats, locks, and lights. Smart home devices with local connections over Bluetooth, Matter, or Zigbee (i.e., that don’t need to send commands to a server in the cloud and wait for a command to come back down) will respond in as little as 300 milliseconds, according to Amazon. You’ll also be able to arm and disarm a Ring Alarm home security system directly from the panel.
Amazon’s new Map View lets you draw your home’s floor plan and mark the locations of all your smart devices in each room. Instead of needing to remember the names of the devices, you can just tap on screen icons to control them.
Jim Martin / Foundry
Amazon also unveiled a new smart home user interface, dubbed Map View, that lets you draw a digital floor plan of your home and then pin icons representing the smart devices in those rooms. You’ll be able to control those devices by tapping on them. Devices that have controls more complex than a simple on or off—a smart thermostat, for instance–will overlay a pop-up display with additional controls.
The Echo Hub’s ability to operate on low voltage makes it much easier to install the panel on a wall—there’s need for an electrician to install an AC outlet behind it, and you won’t need to accommodate a bulky AC adapter or have an unsightly power cord dangling from it. You will need a PoE-capable switch or a PoE injector at the very least. Amazon pointed to its own Eero PoE Gateway ($700), which suggests that it expects professional installers will be among the primary customers for the Echo Hub.
Author: Michael Brown, Executive Editor
Michael is TechHive's lead editor, with 30+ years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the smart home, home audio, and home theater. He built his own smart home in 2007 and used it as a real-world test lab for product reviews. Following a relocation to the Pacific Northwest, he is now converting his new home, an 1890 Victorian bungalow, into a modern smart home.