Summary
- With the discontinuation of Amazon’s PhotosPlus subscription in September 2024, the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition will lose its only unique feature.
- Customers who paid an extra $10 for this device and a $2 subscription fee each month thereafter will now receive a standard Echo Show 8 with a limit on the length of the slideshow before the ads start.
- While users can keep their 25GB of Amazon Photos cloud storage, its future is also uncertain, disappointing those who invested in this smart display.
An interactive touchscreen smart display is one of the best additions to a smart home setup, as it can serve as a control center for smart devices, a helpful assistant on command, and a photo frame when not in use. Amazon’s Echo Show range is a popular choice, and they come in a variety of sizes too, but the company recently dropped its PhotosPlus subscription, so last year’s Echo Show 8 Photos Edition has lost its key differentiator.
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Amazon’s 2023 Echo Show 8 Photos Edition was a $160 smart display that cycled through user-selected images in 30-second intervals. It differed from the $10 cheaper regular Echo Show 8 in that you could let that slideshow run indefinitely, or, in Amazon’s words, make those photos “the primary content you see,” because all of the brand’s other smart displays switch to ads and other promotional content after three hours of slideshow runtime.
That $10 price difference got customers a six-month trial of Amazon’s PhotosPlus subscription for $2 per month, along with 25GB of Amazon Photos cloud storage for your media. However, Amazon is now emailing customers to inform them of the impending discontinuation of PhotosPlus, scheduled for September 23, 2024.
What happens to the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition after the shutdown?
The discontinuation announcement less than a year after its debut is certainly disappointing for people who paid the extra for this device. An Amazon spokesperson told The Verge that the Photos Edition hasn’t been on sale since March. However, the Photos Edition is now a standard Echo Show 8 with the usual three-hour slideshow limit before ads kick in. You can find the slideshow option under Settings → Clock and photo displayAlternatively, you can say, “Alexa, start Photo Frames.”
Amazon is still letting customers access their Amazon Photos cloud storage after the shutdown, and that’s the cloud’s only bright spot. However, we suspect that this convenience won’t last long, although the company doesn’t give a specific closure date.
We’re not happy to see customers being sold a smart display only to be downgraded to the standard version less than a year later. The only explanation the Amazon representative provided wasn’t very helpful. He simply said that the company regularly evaluates its products and services based on customer feedback. We just hope that other Amazon Echo products don’t suffer a similar fate. Not now and not ever.
