Amazon tests renaming Echo smart displays to Alexa

According to images seen by The Verge, Amazon is testing changing the name of its Echo smart speakers and smart displays to Alexa. We saw two separate instances of Amazon.com landing pages displaying the name of the Echo Show 5 smart display as the Alexa Show 5, along with new branding for an Alexa Show 15, Alexa Show 10, Alexa Show 8, and Alexa Spot. 

Following receiving a tip from a reader who landed on an Echo Show 5 page on Amazon.com where the product had been rebranded Alexa Show 5, The Verge attempted to recreate the discovery. While most attempts led us to pages showing Echo Show 5, one account connected to The Verge surfaced the aforementioned Alexa Show 5 page. 

We contacted Amazon about the potential change, and spokesperson Lauren Raemhild said we shouldn’t read too much into this. She said the company is experimenting with how customers search for Echo devices: “Customers love both Echo and Alexa and search for our products in a number of different ways—we’re running an experiment to better understand product discovery, but that doesn’t mean anything is going to change.”

Amazon’s smart speakers have been called Echo since the first one launched in 2014. Every subsequent smart speaker and display the company has sold has been branded Echo, with Alexa as the name of the onboard voice assistant. 

Alexa provides the main function of the speakers, with voice control being the primary way you interact with them. Using voice, you may say to your Echo device, “Alexa, what’s the weather today?”

However, Alexa’s popularity, and likely the fact that you say that name several times a day if you have one of these gadgets, has led to people referring to the speakers as Alexa speakers despite the product actually being called an Echo.

Changing the name of the product line that has been around for over a decade seems unlikely. However, with the impending launch of Alexa Plus, Amazon’s revamped generative AI-powered version of Alexa, it’s possible that Amazon is considering rebranding its hardware, too. Alexa Plus is scheduled to launch sometime in the coming weeks, according to Raemhild.

As of Thursday, March 27th, all mentions of Alexa Shows have been removed from the pages we found, and we were only able to find them initially on one account of the many we tested with. This indicates that this was / is a limited experiment. However, if successful, the potential is there that Amazon may lean into its biggest brand name, Alexa, and say goodbye to Echo for good.