Amazon pulls Echo Wall Clock off the market due to connectivity issues

After customer complaints about connectivity issues, Amazon has pulled the Echo Wall Clock from the market.

Joanna Stern, a tech writer for The Wall Street Journal, first noted the clock’s status change on Twitter, “Guess it wasn’t the time for the Amazon Echo Wall Clock. I reviewed it for our newsletter this week and in the process discovered it’s been pulled because of connectivity issues.”

Guess it wasn’t the time for the Amazon Echo Wall Clock. I reviewed it for our newsletter this week and in the process discovered it’s been pulled because of connectivity issues: https://t.co/1nGHW40rs7

— Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) January 20, 2019

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the clock’s removal to The Verge, “We’re aware that a small number of customers have had issues with connectivity. We’re working hard to address this and plan to make Echo Wall Clock available again in the coming weeks.”

Amazon introduced the Echo Wall Clock along with many other new Alexa-compatible products at the company’s September 2018 Hardware Event, but the device was not available until December 14, 2018.

The clock’s primary purpose is to provide visual reminders for timers set with an Alexa device. Sixty LEDs that mark the minute positions on the clock light up to indicate the time remaining on the first timer that will finish. If you set more than one timer, the second and subsequent timers are indicated by sole LEDs. In the photo accompanying this article, the first timer has nine minutes remaining and a second timer has 15 minutes left. When a timer finishes, all 60 LEDs flash at the same time, along with the associated Alexa device sounds. The flashing and sounds continue until someone says, “Alexa, stop!”

Because this writer’s family has used Alexa timers frequently for two years, we pre-ordered an Echo Wall Clock. We like using the timers but found that too often we had to ask Alexa how much time was left. The Echo Wall Clock sounded like a simple solution to a growing minor annoyance, and its $30 price tag wasn’t much of a premium over a conventional dumb clock.

When the Echo Wall Clock arrived on the launch day, I installed it in our kitchen, paired it with a third-generation Amazon Echo Dot and had no connectivity issues whatsoever. A few weeks later when I paired the clock with a different Echo Dot, there was a minor Bluetooth connectivity issue easily resolved by removing one of the clock’s AA batteries for a couple of seconds. After I popped the battery back in, the clock paired with the second Dot quickly.

As of publication, it’s not clear whether Amazon will put the Echo Wall Clock back on the market. The product page now includes a standard notice Amazon uses when items sell out without a firm re-stocking date or when it removes products for other, unspecified reasons: “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”

We will keep track of the Echo Wall Clock’s availability and cycle back to update this post when the status changes.

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