Amazon’s gadget overload is too much for anyone to soak in

Image: Amazon

At its big event Wednesday, retail giant Amazon introduced new hardware products, ranging from smart speakers, Alexa-enabled glasses, a pet tracker, and even a smart, vibrating ring. 

It’s a total of 15 new hardware products. Let’s count them: Echo, Echo Flex, Echo Dot with clock, Echo Show 8, Echo Studio, Echo Buds, Echo Frames, Echo Loop, Echo Glow, Amazon Smart Oven, Eero, Ring Stick Up Cam, Ring Indoor Cam, Amazon Fetch, and Amazon Sidewalk. 

And let’s not forget that just weeks ago, Amazon announced a number of new hardware products in Berlin, including the new Fire TV Cube and a bunch of third-party, Fire-branded TVs and soundbars. 

I keep up with gadgetry for a living, and even I found the list overwhelming. It took me a couple of hours to go through it all. An average consumer, I’m afraid, will give up somewhere in between Echo Glow, the sort-of-smart lamp thingy, and the quite preposterous Echo Frames, a pair of glasses that are essentially Google Glass sans a display. 

Five new devices is ambitious. 10 is massive. 15 is terrifying. 

One also needs to keep in mind that this September saw major product launches — smartphones, wearables and tablets included — from Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi, to name a few. There’s a point in which all of this becomes too much for nearly everyone, and I believe this point is now. 

One thing I like about Apple is that the company rarely expands its hardware lineup to enormous proportions — the company currently sells a total of six basic smartphone models; Samsung sells more than double that number — and I believe that approach will continue to pay dividends, simply because it makes the choosing process more manageable. 

Of course, Amazon’s strategy is different than that of Apple, which also had an event this month but has shown a total of five new gadgets. Amazon is less concerned about making money on selling hardware and far more interested in making it easier to join its ecosystem, even if it’s through the incredibly cheap Echo Flex. Heck, as far as Amazon’s concerned, you can forget you have it, as long as there’s an Alexa somewhere in the house to answer your query. 

Furthermore, Amazon likely isn’t looking to get any one person to buy all this stuff; they’re throwing it all to the wall, and hoping that something will stick. Need a sound bar? Amazon’s got you covered. Need a smart speaker at any budget? Amazon’s got them all. Need a smart ring? OK, no one really needs a smart ring. 

Still, this vertigo-inducing gadget onslaught should make the consumer wary — and not just about stuffing your home with IoT thingies you don’t really need (and which may be a threat to your privacy). Can Amazon keep the same level of quality across such an enormous lineup? Will all of this stuff get regularly updated and patched? There’s nothing wrong with making your home (and your car, and your face) smarter, but I’m afraid Amazon’s making it harder, instead of easier, to choose the right gadgets.