Amazon has launched its Echo Show 15 – the largest screen-based Echo Show so far – designed to help us all juggle our lives and everything we have to do. As part of the launch, Amazon has partnered with Aussie comedian, singer and mum of three – Em Rusciano – asking her how she finds the Echo Show 15 and if it helps her find some time for herself.
Em says: “As a parent of three, podcast host and touring comedian, I have to keep track of a lot of to-do lists and schedules. Every working parent knows the challenges of balancing it all, and that’s me to a T.
digital BFF that she can’t live without!
“I’m neuro-diverse and have no executive function, so you can imagine the chaos my family and I live in! My family still gives me a hard time about us having to camp out at Rome airport because I not only got the time of our return flight home wrong, but the day too!” Em adds.
Em says this is why the Amazon Echo Show 15 has been a welcome addition to her household – helping to keep the family organised, connected and entertained. As she adds: “It’s easy to simply ask Alexa to add ingredients to shopping lists and check my schedules, play a podcast in the morning over breakfast, or switch the smart lights off as I leave the kitchen and rush to the front door. It’s the digital BFF I now can’t live without!”
The Echo Show 15’s framed screen can be placed in the kitchen, living room or family space, offering access to new household organisation features, in addition to news and entertainment.
The Echo Show 15’s key features include:
- Keeping up with the speed of life: The smart display can be customised with Alexa widgets to see important household information at a glance, view a shared calendar, manage shopping and to-do lists, check the weather, find recipes for meals etc.
- Visual ID: The Echo Show 15 has the new Visual ID feature which delivers a personalised view for each adult in your home, allowing them to create personal profiles to see the specific appointments, reminders, recently-played music and other information they’re looking at.
- Feeding the fam: You can get daily recipe ideas, cook along with step-by-step instructions, and add ingredients to your shopping list.
- Blends in with your home interiors: The Echo Show 15 has a 15.6-inch display which can be mounted on a wall or placed on a counter to blend in with home interiors when not in use.
- Let’s you stay connected: Both inside and outside the home, you can view and control smart home devices, leave notes for household members and speak with loved ones via Alexa calling.
- Stream content in 1080p Full HD: From Netflix, ABC iView and Prime Video, or listen to music and podcasts via Spotify, Apple or Amazon Music for entertainment throughout the day.
- Built with the next-generation Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor: Echo Show 15 is capable of on-device speech and computer vision processing.
What does Amazon have to say about the Echo Show 15?
Amazon says the Echo Show 15 delivers a smoother, faster experience than its predecessors, because of its next-generation Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor, a redesigned home screen with more customisation options, new personalisation features with visual ID and new Alexa experiences.
Kate Burleigh, Country Manager for Amazon Alexa, ANZ, says: “As households move back into a hybrid mode of home and office work in addition to the day to day demands of juggling family priorities like kids’ sport, music practice and remembering the details of the shopping list, life is busier than ever! With the Echo Show 15 and Alexa, we want to show how smart assistance can make the load lighter and more manageable.”
“Our continued innovation across Alexa and Amazon devices aims to ensure that our technology will always be there when you need it, but fade away quietly when you don’t. With visual ID displaying customised calendar and music preferences across a household, Alexa’s performance has never felt more personal,” she adds.
Patrick Walker, Country Manager for Amazon Devices, ANZ says: “With the Echo Show 15, managing your smart is easier than ever for Australians. With a redesigned home screen that acts as a smart home control hub, it brings everything that makes your household tick into one place. You can easily customise your Echo Show 15 experience to display your connected devices, shared household calendar, manage to-do lists and reminders, and even find meal inspiration.
easily with this switch on the side.
“Whether it’s on an open plan kitchen wall, or placed on a living room shelf to be shared and accessible across the household, we’re sure this new framed form factor will help bring households together with the benefits of home organisation, smart home control and entertainment in new ways,” Walker adds.
The fact you can customise the Echo Show 15 is handy – it lets you choose and add the information most useful to you and your household. Alexa widgets continually refresh to stay up to date, so you always have the latest information, and you can rearrange them to suit your needs and preferences.
Personalise Your Experience with Visual ID
With the new visual ID feature, Alexa can recognise you and personalise the on-screen information on Echo Show 15. After enrolling in visual ID, if you walk in front of Echo Show 15, Alexa will recognise you and the screen will automatically update to show you a custom greeting, your personal reminders, calendar events, recently played music, or personal notes from household members.
Stay connected
Echo Show 15 also helps you stay connected with loved ones inside and outside the home. With the sticky notes widget, you can leave a note about dinner time for household members, or a reminder to take the dog for a walk. Plus, with visual ID you can send a note directly to a specific adult household member, which will only show up when Alexa recognises them in front of the device. With its 15.6-inch screen and 5-megapixel camera, Echo Show 15 is also handy for video calls via Alexa.
Enjoy your own entertainment
With its larger screen and support for 1080p video streaming, Echo Show 15 can also double as your kitchen TV. Just ask Alexa to watch movies and TV shows from Prime Video, Netflix etc. You can also catch up on the news from the likes of ABC, news.com.au and Sky News Australia – or ask Alexa to play music or read your Audible book. You can also use it to some of your photos.
Powered by the Next-Gen AZ2 processor
Echo Show 15 is powered by the next-generation Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor, a machine learning (ML) inference engine with a quad-core scalable architecture and 22x more TOPS (trillions of operations per second) than the previous generation. Like AZ1, it’s capable of processing speech recognition on device and can also process computer vision (CV) workloads in parallel. The AZ2
architecture is custom designed by Amazon and runs ML-based speech models significantly faster than its predecessor—enabling CV algorithms that once required the immense computer power of the cloud to be processed entirely on the edge. What this means is that Echo Show 15 is able to recognise an adult household member enrolled in visual ID and will be able to process their voice right on the device.
Privacy and Accessibility: Echo Show 15 is designed with privacy in mind; it has microphone and camera controls, the ability to view and delete your voice recordings, and a built-in shutter to cover the camera. Visual ID is optional and requires explicit enrollment, and you can delete your visual ID profile at any time through the on-device settings or the Alexa app. To learn more about the features providing transparency and control over your Alexa experience and details on Visual ID visit: www.amazon.com.au/echo-show-visual-id. In addition, Echo Show 15 offers accessibility features that benefit all customers, including the ability to interact with Alexa using touch instead of voice, see captions for Alexa’s responses on the device screen, and more. For more information, visit www.amazon.com.au/echoscreenaccessibility.
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