Marketing Meets Technology: Amazon Unveils Ad-Supported Digital Photo Frame Priced at $160

Amazon will end its PhotosPlus service on September 23rd. As a result, the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition—a $160 smart display that can cycle through customer-selected photos without any advertisements—will soon feature advertisements.

All Echo Show devices are capable of entering a photo slideshow mode. The problem, of course, is Amazon’s obsession with advertisements. If you enter Photo Frame mode without a PhotosPlus subscription, you’ll be kicked back into Amazon’s standard advertisement-filled home screen after just three hours.

The Echo Show 8 Photos Edition and its accompanying PhotosPlus subscription were made to attract customers who love photos and hate ads. Pay extra for the Photos Edition hardware, and you get a six-month subscription to PhotosPlus, which lets you run a 24/7 ad-free slideshow based on your Amazon Photos collection.

These photo-centric products were naturally met with criticism, particularly from Google Nest Hub owners who enjoy a relatively seamless photo experience. But some customers were happy to pay extra for PhotosPlus. And, to be fair, the 25GB of Photos storage that comes with PhotosPlus could reasonably justify the $2 monthly subscription fee.

Now, Amazon is killing PhotosPlus. Anyone who bought an Echo Show 8 Photos Edition is effectively left with a standard Echo Show 8. If they want to continue using their smart display as a digital photo frame, they have to put up with Amazon’s ads. There’s only one concession; PhotosPlus subscribers can keep their 25GB of Amazon Photos storage at no additional charge.

Echo Show 8 Photos Edition customers may not have purchased an Echo Show if it weren’t for the robust PhotoPlus subscription. That said, Amazon doesn’t appear to be offering refunds in lieu of PhotosPlus’ demise.

You can enable the three-hour photo slideshow mode on any Echo Show display by entering Settings and navigating to “Clock & Photo Display.” Photo slideshow can also be activated by asking Alexa to “start Photo Frame.” Echo Show 8 Photos Edition owners who are willing to play wack-a-mole with Amazon’s advertisements should dive into their “Home Content” settings and disable anything that sounds ad-adjacent. Setting your language to “English (Canadian)” or “English (UK)” can also limit ad volume.

Source: Amazon via The Verge