Amazon and Google’s Pre-Black Friday Sales Bundle Smart Home Savings
Google and Amazon have been previewing their Black Friday deals for voice assistant-enabled devices well ahead of the shopping tradition. Both tech giants are aiming for parity on their own websites and with their retail partners, but it’s possible to glean a little of their overall strategy. With many new devices available and a deeper bench of earlier generations for smart speakers and smart displays, the discounts are quite steep for the baseline voice assistant hubs. Balancing the stockpile sales are more bundles of those devices with smart home appliances to tie them together.
Cheap Hubs
At Amazon, prices for the Echo family of devices have fallen to new bargain levels. The latest, spherical Amazon Echo, distinguished by its orb shape, is down $40 to $60, while smaller Echo Dot has dropped to just $35, and the Echo Dot Kids Edition with its animal skin, has fallen from $60 to $35. The earlier version of the Echo Dot, meanwhile, is now just $20. The smart displays have similarly dropped in price with a $100 Echo Show 8 and $45 Echo Show 5 dropping $30 and $40, respectively. The newest Echo Show 10 has not come out yet, so has there’s no discount for it this year. At Google, the Nest Mini and Google Home Mini sale prices are the same, falling from $49 to $24. The standard Nest Audio smart speaker dropped from $100 to $60, a smaller drop than the Nest Hub smart display’s discount of $50 from $100 or Nest Hub Max sale at $179, down from $229.
Bundle Up
Amazon and Google’s bundles are more notable for how big the percentage cut is. Amazon Blink cameras with an Echo Show 5 can range from 50% to 58% off, dripping a set of five cameras with a smart display from $465 to $229. With Google, the Nest Hub can be matched with a wired Nest video doorbell for $200 instead of $330. On the other side of the price range, a Nest Mini with two smart lightbulbs only costs $34 instead of $79. Amazon fans of smart doorbells can get a Ring video doorbell paired with either an older Echo Dot for 58% off at $42 or with an Echo Show 5 smart display for $62, a 57% reduction. The smart home devices are crucial in Amazon and Google’s smart home rivalry, however. Once people start building their smart homes around one voice assistant or another, they’re much more likely to stick with it in future purchases and think of it as the default every time they buy something new.
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