Amazon debuts new $100 Eero mesh router with Alexa voice controls

By Taylor Lyles Published September 25, 2019

During this year’s big hardware event, Amazon announced a slew of new products, all with Alexa at the heart of them. One of these includes a $100 router by the mesh networking company, Eero, after its acquisition by Amazon earlier this year.

According to Amazon, all-new Eero router maintains the same level of simplicity and reliability found in other products from the Eero Pro and Eero Beacon lineup. While also expanding upon it with more convenient features.

Recommended Videos

Amazon has claimed that this new router will be extremely easy to set up; with the process taking less than “10 minutes or less,” which is ideal if you’re someone who isn’t extremely tech-savvy. Amazon also promised that the new product would deliver “whole-home mesh” Wi-Fi coverage, a dual-band radio system. The device also comes with support for Eero’s subscription services, Eero Secure, and Eero Secure Plus.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Additionally, like a majority of other Amazon-owned products, the new Eero router will also include Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa. With new and more in-depth controls for the AI, it allows you to increase the granular voice control of your network, meaning you will have the ability to turn on and off your Wi-Fi at any time on specific devices using voice control. One example used was for a parent cutting the Wi-Fi off their child’s electronics until they finish their homework or initiating a Wi-Fi network for guests.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

As far as a release date goes, the new Eero Router is available now in the US for $100 for one device, or for an extra $150 you can purchase three. Unfortunately, those in Europe will have to wait just a little longer, with a release date slated for sometime this year.

As usual, Amazon’s event was a grab-bag of smart home devices and Alexa-powered wearables. The biggest announcements include a new Echo device with a better speaker, a pair of wireless earbuds, and a set of eyeglass frames with Alexa built into them. The range of products is as vast as you could imagine, but Alexa is the one key piece of technology that ties everything together in Amazon’s growing family of hardware.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Based out of Baltimore, Maryland, Taylor is a contributing writer for Digital Trends covering the latest news in the computer…

Computing

The search system in Gmail is about to get a lot less frustrating

Gmail icon on a screen.

Finding relevant information on Gmail can be a daunting task, especially if you have a particularly buzzy inbox. Right now, the email client uses a search operator system that acts somewhat like a shortcut, but not many users know about it.
Today, Google has announced an update to how search on Gmail works, thanks to some help from AI. When you look up a name or keyword in Gmail, the matching results are shown in chronological order.
Moving ahead, search results will be shown based on their relevance. In Google’s words, relevance will take into account three factors viz. frequent contacts, most-clicked emails, and how recently the relevant emails arrived in your inbox.

Old search (left), new search (right) Google
“With this update, the emails you’re looking for are far more likely to be at the top of your search results — saving you valuable time and helping you find important information more easily,” the company says in a blog post.
The updated search system in Gmail is rolling out to users worldwide, and it will be implemented on the desktop version as well as the mobile app. And just in case you are wondering, this is not an irreversible change to the search function in Gmail.
Google says users can switch between “most relevant” and “most recent” search results at their convenience. The overarching idea is to help users find the intended material at a quicker pace.

Computing

Anthropic Claude is evolving into a web search tool

Anthropic has thrown its hat in the race to establish an AI-based web search feature, which it announced on Thursday.

The feature is based on Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet model and integrates web search into the chatbot tool. You can enable the feature in your profile settings. With an AI prompt, you will receive contextual results with search engine sources included, instead of just the link options you would receive in a standard search result. The web search feature will be available, first to paid U.S. customers and will roll out to additional users at a later time.

Computing

AMD dominates Amazon CPU sales, but Intel still fights back

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D sitting on a motherboard.

Although the market share would tell you otherwise, the battle between AMD and Intel is quite fierce right now, and it's AMD that often tops the list of the best processors in the last couple of years. Intel, while it holds a bigger part of the CPU market, is less of a go-to for gamers than AMD these days, and this is reflected in Amazon sales. Just yesterday, AMD held the top 15 spots on the list of Amazon's CPU best sellers. Today, Intel is making its way back.

As spotted by TechEpiphany on X (Twitter), AMD really dominated Amazon CPU sales just recently. Every single CPU in the top 15 belonged to AMD, with Intel nowhere to be seen. Surprisingly, the top processor turned out to be the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is a favorite among gamers.