Amazon's second-gen Echo Show 5 is on sale for the very first time
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While the main takeaway of the latest US smart speaker market report is that Apple's HomePod mini seems to be generating much greater demand than its full-sized (and "full-priced") forerunner, Amazon's surprising and abrupt decline in sales is just as notable... and significantly harder to explain.
It looks like the e-commerce giant's Echo-branded devices are simply no longer as popular as they used to be, which might explain why the newest diminutive Alexa-enabled smart display is already discounted by a whopping 30 bucks.
That may not sound like a life-altering price cut... until you realize it represents no less than 35 percent of the second-gen Echo Show 5's $84.99 MSRP. What you're likely to find highly unusual about this killer deal is that it doesn't come from Amazon itself, but rather Best Buy.
The third-party retailer just so happened to shave an unprecedented $40 off the $119.99 list price of the second-gen Echo Buds as well last week, and believe it or not, the versatile manufacturer of those ultra-affordable noise-cancelling true wireless earbuds has yet to match its rival's top promotion.
In addition to selling the all-new Echo Show 5 in Charcoal, Glacier White, and Deep Sea Blue colors at $54.99 a pop, Best Buy is also charging an all-time low price of $44.99 (down from $79.99) for a first-gen Echo Show 5 in your choice of Charcoal or Sandstone hues.
Released in 2019, the latter model has been sold by Amazon itself at that cool $35 discount a number of times in recent months. But the upgraded version, which was only unveiled a couple of months ago, has never been marked down until today. Not by $5 or $10, and not on Prime Day.
In case you're wondering, the first and second Echo Show 5 editions are not radically different, with a mediocre-sounding 2MP camera replacing a terrible-sounding 1MP camera on the newer device to support slightly crisper video calls.
Everything else looks unchanged, from the 5.5-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 960 x 480 pixels to the "full range" 1.65-inch built-in speaker, the overall design, and all of the well-known Alexa skills and voice tricks.
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