Over the weekend, Amazon quietly raised prices for nearly all of the devices the company makes, including the Echo Dot, Kindle Paperwhite andFire TV Stick HD. It’s the latest in a series of price increases that have hit nearly every company. You can guess what’s to blame.
Amazon’s new prices vary in amount, with at least one device seeing a 60% increase; the company cited the ongoing RAM crisis and component inflation. First spotted by Fortune, some of the company’s cheaper devices appear to be the most affected.
Here’s what the new prices look like:
The Echo Dot saw the largest increase up 60% and $30, from $49 to $79, while the higher-tier Echo Show 11 is also getting a $30 hike from $219 to $249.
Additionally, the 16GB Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite saw hikes, going from $109 to $149 and $159 to $199, respectively. The Fire TV Stick HD only saw a $5 hike from $34 to $39 and the 4K Max rose from $59 to $84.
Surprisingly, the Amazon-owned Ring lineup of doorbells and security cameras didn’t get more expensive.
An Amazon spokesperson told Tom’s Guide, “After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines.” She noted that “significant” increases in memory and component costs led to the decision.
Still a cheaper option
In some cases, despite the price hikes, Amazon’s devices might still be the cheaper option. Unfortunately, that’s because everything else also got more expensive this year.
In July, Roku bumped prices on its streaming devices, with the Roku hitting $150 and the entry-level Roku Streaming Stick now at $40, up from $30.
Kindles might be more expensive than similar rival options like the Nook GlowLight 4, which comes with 32GB of memory for $149.
The Echo Dot, though, remains cheaper than the Google Home Speaker, which starts at $99, though the gap is only $20 now.
Amazon Devices: Outlook
At the moment, only the Fire tablets seem to be unaffected — in fact, they’re the only devices currently on sale, but this could be due largely to the fact that it’s back to school season.
For years, Amazon’s Echo smart home speakers have been the company’s trojan horse to get its voice assistant in homes across the world. Given that Alexa+ is available on virtually every Amazon Echo device, the company may have calculated that it’s saturated the market enough so that adoption of Alexa+ wouldn’t be affected by any potential loss in sales.
Still, the timing is curious, as the company also announced last week that Alexa+ would be available, free of charge, to its newest Fire TV devices. That means if you have a current-generation Amazon Fire TV Stick, the Fire TV Cube, or Amazon Ember smart TV, you can get the full version of Amazon’s AI-enabled assistant without needing a Prime account, or paying $19.99 per month.
Regardless of whether you want Alexa+, more than ever it’s worth waiting until Black Friday or Prime Day to purchase one of Amazon’s devices (sadly, the new sale price may be the old regular price). If you don’t want to wait that long, some third-party retailers are still offering the original price. For example, you can still find the Amazon Echo Dot for $49 at Target and Home Depot.
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