Amazon debuted the new Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 during its fall 2025 hardware event on Tuesday, after heavily relying on previous versions of the smart display to demonstrate upgrades coming to its Alexa smart assistant at an event earlier this year.
The Echo Show 8 is a new version of one of Amazon’s smaller smart displays, last updated in 2023. As the name suggests, it includes an 8-inch display, in this case with a 720p resolution. It’s an LCD display, but apparently an improved one, with wider viewing angles and higher contrast than older Show hardware.
There’s not been an Echo Show 11 before, but it feels like a follow-up to the Echo Show 10, which hasn’t been seen since 2021. In addition to a larger display than the new Show 8, it enjoys a higher 1080p resolution.
Both smart displays have been redesigned to be slimmer and sleeker, something my colleague Jennifer found especially apparent when she saw the new hardware in person. The bezels around the screens look thinner than before, though these still aren’t edge-to-edge — there’s enough room for a 13-megapixel camera to sit above each display. But there’s a premium look to the hardware that Amazon’s chunky old Echo Shows could never offer.
That extends to the speakers too. Both new Shows have rounded oblong speakers behind the displays, wrapped in 3D knit fabric. The screens are mounted slightly above and away from the speakers, hopefully leaving enough space for the sound to travel, and for your voice to reach the Show’s microphones.
Audio has been upgraded internally as well, with new front-facing stereo speakers and a custom woofer, able to blast music directly at you or deliver spatial audio.
Unlike some recent Echo Shows, including the last Show 10, both the new devices are static. Amazon is selling a separate magnetic stand which will let you tilt the screen a little, but nothing along the lines of the motorized Shows that can follow you around the room.
Like all of the products Amazon announced today, the new Echo hardware is designed to run on Amazon’s revamped Alexa Plus AI assistant, a more powerful assistant based on LLM technology. New AZ3 Pro chips inside both devices will power the upgraded assistant and the new Omnisense sensor platform, which combines information from the camera, microphones, Wi-Fi radar, accelerometer, and more to sense what’s going on around it.
It can combine those sensors to track what’s going on in the house. The impressive example that Amazon gave on stage was asking Alexa Plus to let you know if no-one remembers to feed the dog, with the AI assistant apparently capable of keeping track.
Alexa Plus is still optional for now — you’ll have the choice to enable Early Access out of the box on the new Echo Shows, but can stick with regular Alexa if you prefer. Alexa Plus is still US-only for now though, so if you live elsewhere you’ll be getting the older assistant either way.
Show UI, the interface that launched with Alexa Plus on the Show 21 and 15 earlier this year, has had some improvements too. Amazon shows off a new full-screen smart home panel that helps you control multiple smart home devices at once. And since both devices support the Thread, Matter, and Zigbee smart home protocols, they should serve as pretty capable smart home hubs.
Amazon also announced a range of new partners who will deepen the Alexa Plus experience on the Show screens. For example, integrations with Oura and Withings will enable improved sleep and health tracking on a dedicated Health and Wellness display, though they’re just two of many partners, including Uber, OpenTable, Lyft, Fandango, and Wyze.
The Echo Show 8 will cost $179.99, and the Echo Show 11 will be $219.99, and both are available to preorder today, ahead of full availability on November 12th.
These are just two sizes in Amazon’s usual range of Echo Show hardware. We’re still waiting for updated versions of the large Echo Show 15, with a thin design but a large 15.6-inch screen wrapped in a picture frame, allowing the smart display to blend in with art on the wall, and the even larger Echo Show 21, with a 21-inch screen that doubled as an alternative to Amazon’s Fire TV. The compact Echo Show 5 is also due an update eventually.
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