Amazon’s newest products expand its surveillance inside the home

Last year, Amazon announced the Always Home Cam — a flying drone camera that keeps an eye on your house. The product never came out. Learning to fly isn’t easy, a company representative quipped during today’s launch event.

But the Always Home Cam is dropping, for real this time. Interested customers can apply to buy one for $249.99 starting today.

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Other Ring updates include the Ring Alarm Pro, which comes with an Eero WiFi router built in for better, more consistent connectivity and nonstop Internet backups. There’s also the Ring Virtual Security Guard, a subscription product that calls a professional monitoring service to review camera footage — and even communicate with potential intruders — when an alert is triggered on your property.

Amazon’s Ring video doorbells get all the attention — for better or worse — but the company just announced yet another model, this time under the Blink brand name.

Blink was acquired by Amazon in late 2017 and is best known for its line of wireless, outdoor security cameras. The $50 Blink video doorbell feels a lot like a Ring doorbell designed to appeal to people who have already bought into the Blink hardware ecosystem. (In other words, current Ring owners won’t need to worry about this.)

[Home-security cameras have become a fruitful resource for law enforcement — and a fatal risk]

Amazon is releasing a new version of its privacy-invading Halo wearable, now with a screen added and microphones subtracted. It’s also launching a streaming workout service similar to Apple Fitness.

In many ways, Amazon and Apple are complete opposites when it comes to their hardware events. Apple’s announcements clearly cost more and have higher production value, while Amazon’s are mostly shot on a normal stage surrounded by plants. While Apple is stingy and controlled about what new devices and services it releases, Amazon is always happy to throw out tons of products even if they’re going to fail.

Amazon is teaming up with Disney to launch a new customized-voice assistant that answers to “Hey, Disney” (reminiscent of “Hey, Google,” its rival’s wake word).

Disney World Resort hotels will integrate the voice assistant to help park visitors find restaurants, rides and other attractions.

The new library of voices and characters will also be available on Echo devices, allowing users to chat with characters or play trivia games.

It’s a fairly major partnership between the two companies, which compete against each other in the video-streaming world. It’s also the first time Amazon has introduced a new voice assistant.

Amazon’s smart screens haven’t always been much to look at, but its latest — the Amazon Glow — is a little different. For one, it’s meant specifically for kids and the people who want to interact with them. It packs a top-down projector that shoots a virtual, 19-inch touch screen onto the floor or table on which it’s sitting.

Amazon says kids will be able to see “remote loved ones” on an eight-inch screen, while playing on that touch-sensitive space. Meanwhile, the loved ones on the other end of the video call can see what those tots are up to and can interact with them using a dedicated Glow app.

In an oddly late move, Amazon is finally making its own Nest clone. The smart thermostat is made in combination with Honeywell-maker Resideo and will cost $60, which is on the low end for options on Amazon.com. There are more than 300 results for “smart thermostat” on the site and the low-end prices cost between $80 and $120. That includes Honeywell smart thermostats, which already exist as well. It’s unclear why Amazon took so long to make this, but it fits with its plan to dominate the smart home and lock it into the Amazon ecosystem.

Amazon’s latest Echo Show device is supersized and packs some features that push privacy concerns right to the edge. The 15-inch Echo Show 15 is basically a wall-mounted television. It can be vertical or horizontal and is meant to be a hub for your family life. It has a new look that’s similar to a giant smartphone home screen, covered in widgets like the weather, a digital sticky note and your calendar. It can play TV shows, show family photos, and jot down your reminders.

But here is where it gets weird.

Amazon already leads the smart speaker market, with more than half of all devices shipped during the second quarter of 2021 equipped with the company’s Alexa voice assistant, according to data from IDC. By comparison, devices with Google Assistant comprise about 44 percent of that market, and devices with Apple’s Siri make up 8 percent.

But Google’s updates to its Nest smart cameras and doorbells in August lean into the company’s superior artificial intelligence capabilities, with algorithms that can identify events like package deliveries running right on the device.