Amazon is bringing Zoom and Amazon Chime to its Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen) smart displays in the U.S., ramping up its usefulness in the home.
The latest Amazon Echo Show has been hamstrung by the lack of support for video calling services outside its own Alexa calling service and Skype, so the additions of Zoom and Chime should go some way to stamp out that issue.
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If you've been suffering from Zoom fatigue, it might not be the news you want to hear; however, it does mean a serious leap in the device's functionality for a variety of users. The Echo Show 8 already offers Zoom support, so its absence was notable in the Echo Show 10, not to mention its lack of support for Amazon Chime.
With the pandemic reshaping our working lives, Zoom is now a cornerstone of remote working, enabling people to keep in touch with colleagues and family through its video conferencing interface. In fact, you’ll struggle to find anyone who hasn’t relied on the application at one point or another, making it a welcome supplement to the newest Echo.
The Echo Show 10’s motorized base lets Alexa swivel the screen to face you on a call, using the camera’s in-built face-tracking technology to seemingly offer an effortless user experience on Zoom.
The ability to pair your calendar to Alexa and Zoom should allow you to stay on top of your schedule through the Echo Show 10 by automatically organizing your calendar, providing you have a meeting ID and passcode. In theory, this means that you can command Alexa to join a call on the video conferencing service.
Amazon Chime will work in a similar manner: meet, chat and place calls to colleagues from the smart display, saving the hassle of digging around for an invite link in a flooded inbox.
The updates are rolling out automatically to the Echo Show 10. As such, users should now have plenty of options to choose from when participating in remote calls, plus greater flexibility in where they can make video calls without having to move their entire workstation to different rooms.
Zoom's soaring popularity over the last year has lead to more features arriving on the platform, such as the ability to change your appearance in real-time and escape boring Zoom calls — all of which can now be used through the Echo Show 10.
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