Amazon's always-listening Bee Frontier costs $74.99, and Bee Pro is $11.99 a month
Amazon is selling an always-listening AI wearable for $74.99 at Amazon.com, against the $349 Meta charges for the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio, and the subscription that sits above it costs $11.99 a month. Amazon says Bee Frontier is available now in Onyx, Lavender and Sage, carries an IP67 water resistance rating and runs for up to seven days on a charge.
Bee Eclipse, which Amazon's own caption says attaches magnetically to the back of a phone, has no release date. Image: Amazon
It is worn on a silicone wristband or clipped to clothing, and it listens through dual microphones with noise filtering. A single press turns it on and off, an indicator light signals when it is on, and Amazon says it can be configured to switch itself off when it detects no sound for a set period, five or 15 minutes being its own examples.
Amazon calls Frontier the next generation of its wearable, and names Bee Pioneer as the first device in the line.
Bee Frontier (left) and Bee Eclipse (right), as Amazon captions them: the $74.99 wearable and the one starting at $99.99. Image: Amazon
The second device is the one without a date. Bee Eclipse is about the size of a credit card, attaches magnetically to the back of a phone and has "more than 21 days of battery life on a single charge", and Amazon says it "will be available soon, starting at $99.99 in Silver, Midnight, Honey, and Blush", which is a floor for a four-colour range rather than a price.
The cheap end of this category is filling up. VONDER's $299 AI glasses have no camera or display and went on sale in September, and Bee Frontier costs a quarter of that.
A Bee device being worn, from Amazon's September post on how Bee handles conversations. Image: Amazon
The 14-day memory is free and Bee Pro is extra
Buying the hardware gets you something without a subscription. Amazon says everyone who buys a Bee gets conversation summaries, recaps and 14-day memory at no additional cost, and that all new customers get 30 days of Bee Pro free.
Bee Pro costs $11.99 a month and adds unlimited recent summaries, suggested to-dos, a desktop app and the integrations with Alexa+ and Amazon.com. The shopping side of that works on what the device has heard: Amazon says Bee can surface products a user mentions as recommendations on the Amazon homepage and inside the Bee mobile and desktop apps.
Amazon's own illustration for Bee Private Compute, the architecture it says keeps conversations inaccessible to it. Image: Amazon
Amazon says the audio is deleted after processing
Every privacy claim here is Amazon describing its own system. "Audio is processed into insights in real time and deleted after processing", the announcement says, transcripts are "encrypted using keys that only your device creates and controls", and audio "is never stored, cannot be accessed or shared".
Both devices run on what Amazon calls Bee Private Compute, "a security architecture that processes your conversations inside a secure and isolated processing environment where no one, including Amazon, can access your data". Transcripts and summaries can be deleted at any time, and Amazon says that on calls "users are prompted to gain permission from call participants each time a recording is started".
Connecting the device to Alexa+ brings a second account into it: Amazon says the Echo device uses voice ID to recognise a user and serve that person their own Bee insights.
Amazon gives no price outside Amazon.com, no ship date for Bee Eclipse and no top to its four-colour range. The seven-day and 21-day battery figures are its own, with no test behind them, so the firm numbers are $74.99 now and $99.99 and up whenever the phone attachment turns up.
