Amazon is pushing deeper into AI wearables with two new Bee gadgets that capture and make sense of your day. On Thursday, it introduced Bee Frontier, and it also took the wraps off Bee Eclipse as part of a broader effort to remake Bee - the startup Amazon acquired last year - into a contender in the fast-moving AI hardware race. That comes after Amazon shut down the Halo health trackers in 2023.
Bee Frontier is a slimmer, smaller wristband that can handle water and costs $75, updating the earlier $50 model. It still listens when you tell it to, turning daily moments into transcripts, conversation recaps and auto-generated to-do lists inside the companion app. You can pick it up in lavender, sage or onyx, it's quoted at seven days per charge, and it's available to order in the US.
Bee Eclipse takes a different form factor. It is a compact, card-like recorder that snaps magnetically to the back of a phone and resembles a rival product from Plaud Inc. Priced from $100 and planned in four colors, it is rated to last more than 21 days on a charge. Amazon hasn't shared when Eclipse will go on sale.
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Amazon is introducing a $12 per month Bee Pro plan for the app. Pro subscribers also get a desktop version of the app that can use a Mac or Windows microphone to capture Zoom meetings and produce summaries. On the free tier, summaries and recaps only cover the most recent 14 days. Anyone buying a new Bee device receives a 30-day free trial for the Pro tier.
Recordings are opt-in. Bee devices require a button press to begin or stop capturing, and Amazon says users are prompted to obtain consent from call participants whenever a recording begins. Amazon and Apple both say their devices do not retain raw audio of everyday conversations; recordings are deleted after producing summaries and insights.
Big Tech is crowding into AI gadgets. Last month Apple announced free, always-listening features that let new Apple Watches recap conversations. Meta rolled out a palm-size device and new audio-only smart glasses tied to its Muse AI. Plaud, meanwhile, added new third-party integrations to its software when it revealed new AI earbuds in August.
For your wallet, the hardware prices are only part of the story. The $12 subscription, the free 30-day Pro trial and the 14-day limit on the free plan are the knobs that will decide how much value you actually get from these record-and-summarize tools.
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