Amazon promises most Echo speakers will get upgraded to Matter
Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and dozens of other firms have agreed to try to make setting up smart homes easier with Matter, a cross-platform open-source standard coming later this year. Now, Amazon has revealed the scope of its initial commitment: it will be upgrading almost every plug-in Echo smart speaker to support Matter, including most Echo and Echo Dot speakers and every Echo Studio, Echo Show, Echo Plus, and Echo Flex. In fact, the only Echo smart speakers that won’t get upgraded to Matter are the first-gen Echo, first-gen Echo Dot and Echo Tap, a rep tells The Verge.
While the company doesn’t provide a timeline for those upgrades, the general idea is that Matter will launch by late 2021, so it shouldn’t be long until Amazon’s newest and / or more popular devices receive the capability.
A bigger question is whether any of them will work as Matter hubs. Google announced in May that in addition to upgrading its Nest devices to Matter, it would allow its devices that support the Thread protocol (like the Nest Wi-Fi, Nest Hub Max, and second-gen Nest Hub) to double as connection hubs for Matter, too, not simply as a voice assistant to control Matter gadgets. But while Amazon’s Eero routers were early to adopt Thread, Amazon’s Echo smart speakers were not.
