Amazon's Bee launches two new AI devices, starting at $75

Amazon’s personal AI wearable maker, Bee, introduced its first new products since the retail giant acquired the company last year. On Thursday the company unveiled the Bee Frontier, the next generation of its wrist-worn or clip-on device, alongside the Bee Eclipse, a credit-card-sized accessory that magnetically attaches to the back of a smartphone.

The Bee Eclipse puts the company into more direct competition with devices like the Plaud Note and Pocket, though at a lower price: the Bee Frontier costs $74.99, compared with $159 for the Plaud Note (or $189 for the Note Pro) and $129 for the Pocket AI device. The Bee Frontier comes in Onyx, Lavender, and Sage; the $99.99 Bee Eclipse comes in Silver, Midnight, Honey, and Blush.

Like the original Bee, the new devices use AI to turn everyday conversations into notes, to-dos, and summaries — for instance, capturing a plan to turn into a calendar invite. All Bee devices offer free conversation summaries and recaps with 14 days of memory; an $11.99-a-month Bee Pro subscription adds unlimited summaries, integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa+, and other apps, suggested to-dos, daily memories, and a personal chat assistant.

The devices run on a private-computing architecture that never stores raw audio: conversations are processed in real time and then deleted, and transcripts are encrypted with keys the user’s own device creates and controls, so no one else — including Amazon employees — can access them unless the user shares them. Users can also opt to link Bee to Alexa, letting an Echo device’s Voice ID feature recognize their voice and trigger a recording for Bee’s insights; that link is optional, and users can delete transcripts and summaries at any time.

The Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse each have a single button to turn the device on and off, plus an indicator light for when it’s summarizing a conversation. The Frontier adds IP67 water resistance, up to seven days of battery life, USB-C charging, and dual microphones with noise filtering. Both devices ship with a newly redesigned companion mobile app and a new desktop app. The Bee Frontier is available now on Amazon, with the Eclipse to follow soon after.

Why it matters

The launch extends Amazon’s push into always-listening AI hardware at a lower price than rivals like Plaud and Pocket, while tying the devices more tightly into Amazon.com and Alexa — giving Amazon a new data and commerce touchpoint built around personal conversations.