Amazon recently announced its newest lineup of smart home products, including the latest Echo Show, Dot, and Studio. This comes after Apple made a splash in the smart home market with its new Apple HomeView. Amazon will face a lot of competition this year. Still, it may gain an edge with the diversity of its products and the unique features some of them offer, including the Echo Studio, which comes with a camera that may be helpful or creepy.

There’s also a completely new Amazon device in the lineup this year: the Amazon Echo Time, a smart clock currently priced at $199. Now, the price tag may seem a bit steep for a clock, but given the device’s capabilities, it could be a valuable addition to your home, depending on your needs.

Amazon claims the Echo Time can support healthier sleeping habits

The clock has ‘science-backed’ features that could be useful

The Echo Time features multiple sensors that detect room temperature, breathing, and proximity, according to the company’s press release. Those sensors are used to detect sleep patterns, and while those features are automatically opt-in upon purchase, you can turn them off. By detecting sleep patterns, the clock has an optional smart alarm feature where, instead of the clock waking you up at a specific time, it can ease in the alarm sound, and will set the sound off at a time it thinks is a better one within a 10-60 minute frame within the time you set.

That smart alarm feature can be helpful if you don’t have a set alarm time and can be flexible with your ideal wake-up times. For me, if I set an alarm for a specific time, I’d want it to go off then, so that feature is rather useless for me and could get me into big-time trouble if I have somewhere to go early in the morning. Amazon doesn’t mention whether the clock will measure sleep patterns, but that would be extremely useful if it had that capability, given its sleep-monitoring sensors, which could potentially replace the need to wear wearables while you sleep to monitor patterns.

The Echo Time features an adaptable night mode that reduces blue light in the evening, as you prepare to go to sleep. In the morning, the display mimics the sun, gradually brightening based on your sleeping habits. The Amazon Alexa integration lets you ask about the weather and other questions, and stream music from your preferred app. There are over 100 interchangeable displays for the clock, including themes from popular shows and movies, such as Superman, Harry Potter, and Scooby-Doo.

Is the Amazon Echo Time worth it?

Many smart home devices offer a lot of the same features

The Amazon Echo may be worth it if you’re interested in the sensor-backed alarm feature and want a clock device that’s simply separate from using the alarm on your phone. However, the $199 price tag is a tough sell, especially since you can’t currently track and view your sleep patterns with the clock. If the Echo Time did have that feature, it’d be a completely different story and might be a legit alternative to a wearable primarily used for sleep tracking.

Amazon also offers many other devices that can serve as smart clocks at a lower cost, including previous generations of the Echo Spot and Dot, which are available on third-party retail sites for $100 or less. The Dot doesn’t have interchangeable displays, but previous versions of the Spot, Google Nest Hub, and other Google Assistant-powered clocks offer this feature at considerably lower prices.

The Echo Time may especially not be worth the cost if you’ve already purchased a smart hub device (i.e., Apple HomeView, Amazon Echo Hub, Google Nest Hub), as the latest models already cost $150+, so spending another $200 for a smart clock would be more of a luxury purchase.

Where Amazon can improve with future Echo Time models

Sleep monitoring and tracking would be useful

If Amazon does eventually make a second-gen version of the Echo Time, the biggest value would be continued development of the device’s sensors and overall technology to provide in-depth sleep monitoring and tracking. That could be a large ask, considering Amazon would likely have to conduct substantial research to claim it can offer those features, as it doesn’t want to run into issues with people questioning its accuracy, similar to what Oura Health is going through right now with its Oura Ring product. However, Amazon claimed that the Echo Time earned the National Sleep Foundation’s SleepMark designation, an award based on evidence-based criteria, sleep health principles, and standards, so the company might as well lean into that space.

There are very few smart clocks that offer sleep-tracking data to consumers, making the market less competitive for Amazon. The company’s main competitor is the Hatch Sleep Clock, which offers contactless sleep tracking and is currently priced at $249. But for now, the Amazon Echo Time doesn’t seem worth the price.