Amazon's Echo Time is a $200 camera-free smart clock built for better sleep

Amazon is expanding its smart home devices today, updating some existing ones, and adding something completely new with the Amazon Echo Time. The orb-like smart clock is similar in look to the Echo Spot, and with sleep wellness as its focus, it’s meant for the nightstand.

As Amazon explains, the Echo Time is powered by Alexa+, and has “science-backed wind-down and wake-up features” that have been given the National Sleep Foundation’s SleepMark designation for meeting evidence-based sleep health standards. Those include a smart alarm that kicks in within 10 to 60 minutes of a set alarm to wake you up when it detects you’re in a lighter sleep. The Echo Time display brightens as it prepares to wake you, and plays a customizable alarm tone that starts quietly and gradually gets louder every time it’s snoozed, up to four times. At night, the display dims and is limited to just the current time or the time of the next set alarm.

Because the Echo Time is meant for the bedroom, Amazon emphasizes that it is camera-free. It gauges sleep using Amazon’s proprietary, ambient AI Omnisense sensor technology that it introduced in other devices last year. That taps into data from room temperature sensors and presence detection to understand your sleep routine, and uses ultrasound detection to get information about breathing and proximity. For when you absolutely have to be woken up at an exact time, the smart alarm can be switched off.

The Echo Time has a 3.2-inch customizable circular touchscreen. Its clock faces can be changed between hundreds of options that span analog clock designs, nature backdrops, seasonal themes, sports teams, and characters.

For kids, there’s an Amazon Kids Echo Time that’s powered by Amazon Kids+, and lets kids set alarms and clock faces and ask Alexa questions. It has Sleep Studio, a kids-focused platform that has parent-controlled sleep schedules and wind-down content from Calm, Headspace, and Moshi.

The Echo Time is available today for $199.99, and comes in Graphite, Glacier White, and Coral Pink. The Amazon Kids Echo Time is also available today, for $209.99 with a one-year included Kids+ subscription. It comes in two colors: Galactic Grape and Cosmic Lime.