Almost all of the time spent during Amazon’s February 26, 2025, ‘Devices and Services’ event was on Alexa Plus. It’s the glow-up we’ve been waiting for, seemingly making Alexa much more natural, leagues smarter, and potentially invaluably helpful.
Even so, at the center of all the demos – including the ones led by Devices lead Panos Panay – was one device, the Echo Show 21. It’s the biggest smart display from Amazon and the largest touchscreen Alexa interface, supporting an all-new Alexa Plus user interface (UI) at launch.
Both of those attributes likely made it easier to demonstrate Alexa’s new tricks to a large audience on stage and in demo rooms, but even so, it speaks to Amazon’s bigger ambitions. With Alexa Plus, you can talk more conversationally, interrupting it when necessary just like you would when talking to another person, all without repeating the wake word.
But it’s also a touch-first experience – now more than ever. When you ask Alexa to call an Uber or another rideshare service for your friend from Newark Airport in New Jersey to an office in New York City, Alexa will read out the first option. However, you can also tap to select whichever ride level is best for your needs to speed up the interaction.
The same goes for asking Alexa to check if anyone walked the dog – it can pull up all the recent Ring video alerts where a dog was pictured. Rather than waiting for it to cycle through them all, you can swipe with a finger along the bottom of the screen UI. As impressive as chatting with the new Alexa is, the interface was designed with touch in mind.
Further, Amazon will give you first dibs on trying Alexa Plus – well, access to the service during the initial rollout phase – if you have a household with an Echo Show 8, 10, 15, or 21. Keep in mind that you’ll need to be in the United States with a Prime membership or pay $19.99 a month.
The screen part of the Alexa experience is more critical than ever before. It’s not just for showing a weather graphic depicting the conditions outside or for displaying a fun GIF when you ask Alexa for a joke. Your Echo Show isn’t even just for streaming a TV show or movie from Prime Video. Beyond just chatting it up with Alexa, Amazon wants you to interact with Alexa Plus with touch.
That’s almost a retraining, and one that is ideal for Amazon – or at least, I think if you ask them – to put the importance of getting an Echo Show in your home at the highest spot on the list. I already find the Echo Show handy. It’s a multipurpose screen that potentially lets you put your phone away. With the Echo Show 21 and Alexa Plus, as you ask for help ordering groceries, making dinner reservations, or even securing concert tickets, you can have a natural conversation with the AI and jump in touch when necessary.
And even if you only have an Echo Show in the kitchen or mounted on the wall in a hallway, it can always be the central device for your queries. Let’s say you really want to get tickets for Bruce Springsteen on his upcoming European tour or for Sabrina Carpenter – I mean, we all want to hear Busy Woman live – you can start by asking Alexa Plus on an Echo Dot for tickets, but rather than hear a laundry list of all the available sections, you say, “Show it to me on my Echo Show (or even Kitchen Echo, if that’s where it is)” and from there you can scroll and see visuals of all the seat locations. That could be really handy, plus you get the added benefits of a larger screen Echo.
It’s part of Amazon’s larger play here: to get an Echo screen into everyone’s home. I’m for it, especially after seeing the experience of ordering Amazon Fresh and letting Alexa Plus do some of the heavy lifting. That’s awesome, but it’s also the smarter reminders and the fact that it doubles as a TV, a shared calendar, and so much more.
It also fits in with the strategy of other brands. Samsung comes to mind first, as they famously push the idea of a screen everywhere, from an actual TV to a screen in, say, your fridge, stove, and dryer or washer. That tech giant won’t make a smart display, but Apple, on the other hand, is rumored to be entering this category with a device that could mark a major win for its Home ecosystem, which has had its speed bumps.
Amazon has a unique opportunity to actually end up with a screen in most of its users’ homes, though. It’s long offered an Echo Show in various sizes, with the 5 and 8 being some of the most affordable, so there’s a good chance you might already have one. Alexa Plus will likely excite you with an AI infusion that is set to be way more natural and make the smart home easy to control – advanced routines and all – in a device that isn’t a phone.
@techradar
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