The short version: Amazon’s Bee team has launched two new always-listening AI wearables. The Bee Frontier ($74.99, available now) is a wristband or clip-on that records your day and turns conversations into notes, summaries and to-dos. The Bee Eclipse ($99.99, coming soon) is a credit-card-sized device that magnetically attaches to the back of your phone, built mostly for capturing phone calls. Both pair with a redesigned Bee app, and an optional $11.99/month Bee Pro subscription adds unlimited memory plus integrations with Alexa+, Amazon.com, Gmail, Google Calendar and more.
What Are the Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse?
Bee started life as an independent AI hardware startup whose whole pitch was simple: most of your life happens in conversation, and your phone misses all of it. Amazon bought the company in June 2025, and the Frontier and Eclipse are the first Bee products released under Amazon ownership.
The idea behind both devices is ambient computing. Instead of pulling out your phone to take a note, the devices listen throughout the day, transcribe what matters, and have AI sort the result into searchable summaries, key events and to-do lists. A casual plan made over coffee (“let’s grab lunch Tuesday”) can become a calendar invite without you touching a screen.
Bee Frontier: Price, Colors and Release Date
The Bee Frontier is the next generation of the original wrist-worn Bee device, redesigned to be lighter and smaller. It can be worn on the wrist like a band or clipped to clothing, so you are not locked into one wearing style.
- Price: $74.99, on sale now in the US.
- Colors: Onyx, Lavender and Sage.
- Battery: Up to 7 days per charge, charged over USB-C.
- Durability: IP67 water and dust resistance, so it survives rain and a full week of wear.
- Microphones: Dual mics with noise filtering, aimed at picking out the important details in noisy places like restaurants and open offices.
- Controls: A single button toggles the device on and off, plus a visible indicator light when it is summarizing a conversation. There is also an auto-cutoff timer that stops listening when no sound is detected.
The Frontier ships with a newly redesigned companion mobile app and, for the first time, a Bee desktop app.
Bee Eclipse: Price, Colors and Release Date
The Bee Eclipse is the new arrival. It is a slim, credit-card-sized accessory that magnetically attaches to the back of a smartphone, and it is designed primarily for transcribing phone calls rather than in-person conversation.
- Price: $99.99, listed as coming soon. Amazon has not named a firm ship date.
- Colors: Silver, Midnight, Honey and Blush.
- Battery: Amazon claims more than 21 days per charge, by far the longest of any Bee device.
- Controls: A dedicated control button and an indicator light that shows when conversation processing is active.
The Eclipse puts Bee into direct competition with dedicated call-recording gadgets like the Plaud Note and Pocket. At $99.99 it undercuts the $159 Plaud Note, the $189 Plaud Note Pro and the $129 Pocket, which is clearly part of the strategy.
How the Always-On AI Actually Works
When the device is switched on, it captures audio from your day and processes it in real time. The Bee app then turns the stream into conversation summaries, recaps and suggested to-dos, all searchable later. If someone mentions a meeting, a plan or a deadline, the AI flags it as a key event.
Bee is also getting a new capability with this launch: a connection to Alexa+ and to Amazon.com. The Alexa+ link lets you ask Echo devices for your Bee summaries and insights by voice instead of opening the app, using Echo’s Voice ID to recognize your voice and trigger recordings. The Amazon.com link lets Bee pull in your account and purchase history to give more personalized shopping recommendations based on products you talked about. Both links are optional.
This matters because it changes what the device is. It is no longer just a note-taker. Tied into Alexa+ and Amazon.com, it becomes a personal memory layer that feeds Amazon’s ecosystem, and that is exactly where the privacy questions begin.
Bee Pro: What the $11.99 Subscription Adds
The free tier on every Bee device includes conversation summaries and recaps with 14 days of memory. Bee Pro, at $11.99 per month, adds:
- Unlimited conversation summaries and memory.
- Suggested to-dos generated from your conversations.
- Daily memories, a recap of what happened in your day.
- Integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa+, and third-party apps including Gmail, Google Calendar, Apple Health and Microsoft Outlook.
- A personal chat assistant you can query about your own recorded history.
For comparison, this subscription model is becoming standard across AI wearables: the hardware is priced low, and the recurring revenue comes from the memory service. Meta’s approach with its camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses ($49) follows a similar playbook of cheap hardware and cloud services.
Privacy: What Happens to Your Conversations?
This is the section most buyers should read twice. An always-listening device is a very different proposition from a voice assistant that waits for a wake word, and Amazon’s Bee makes a deliberate break from Amazon’s own history: Bee listens around the clock when switched on, unlike Echo devices that stay dormant until cued.
Here is what Amazon says about the safeguards:
- No raw audio is stored. Conversations are processed in real time under Bee’s Private Compute security architecture, then the audio is deleted.
- Transcripts are encrypted with keys the user’s own device creates and controls, so neither Amazon employees nor anyone else can read them unless the user shares them.
- Users can delete stored transcripts and summaries at any time.
- Consent prompt: Amazon says the app will prompt users to ask permission before recording other people. Whether that actually happens in practice, as Morning Brew dryly noted, is on the honor system.
- Indicator light: Each device has a light showing when it is active, though nearby people may not notice it.
That is a stronger privacy posture than many rivals offer on paper. But the social questions remain: consent laws for recording conversations vary by US state, and a device that records everyone in the room creates obligations the wearer has to manage. If you buy one, the respectful move is to tell people it is on.
Bee Frontier vs Bee Eclipse vs the Competition
| Device | Price | Form | Battery | Key strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bee Frontier | $74.99 | Wristband / clip-on | 7 days | All-day in-person capture, IP67 |
| Bee Eclipse | $99.99 | Magnetic phone attachment | 21+ days | Phone-call transcription |
| Plaud Note | $159 | Card-sized recorder | 30 hours record | Call + meeting recording |
| Meta Muse pendant | Unannounced | Pendant | Unknown | Ties into Meta’s Muse agent |
| Ray-Ban Meta Audio | $49 | Glasses | 12 hours (48 with case) | Cheapest entry to Meta AI |
The Frontier’s real rivals are not the Plaud-style recorders so much as the emerging class of always-on AI companions: Meta’s Muse pendant unveiled weeks ago, and the “always-listening” Apple Watch feature Apple recently shipped alongside its HomeView smart home push. Bee’s advantage is price and Amazon ecosystem integration. Its disadvantage is that it is asking you to trust Amazon with a transcript of your entire day, which is a harder sell than trusting it with your shopping cart.
Should You Buy One?
The Bee Frontier makes sense for people who live in meetings: founders, salespeople, researchers, anyone whose work evaporates into conversation. At $74.99 it is the cheapest credible way to get an AI memory of your day, and the 7-day battery means you can genuinely wear it all week.
The Eclipse is the more focused bet: if your most important conversations happen on phone calls, a magnetic attachment with a 3-week battery is genuinely convenient. But with no firm release date, it is a wait-and-see for now.
In both cases, weigh the convenience against the social cost. These devices record everyone around you. The technology is ready. The etiquette is not, and how people around you react to a glowing wristband that is always taking notes may matter more than any spec sheet.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the Bee Frontier cost?
The Bee Frontier costs $74.99 and is available now in the US in Onyx, Lavender and Sage.
When does the Bee Eclipse come out?
Amazon has not announced a release date for the $99.99 Bee Eclipse. It is listed as coming soon in Silver, Midnight, Honey and Blush.
Does Bee store your audio recordings?
No, according to Amazon. Bee’s Private Compute architecture processes conversations in real time and deletes the audio. Transcripts are encrypted with keys controlled by the user’s device, and users can delete them at any time.
What does Bee Pro cost and what do you get?
Bee Pro costs $11.99 per month and adds unlimited memory, suggested to-dos, daily memories, integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa+, Gmail, Google Calendar, Apple Health and Outlook, plus a personal chat assistant. The free tier includes summaries with 14 days of memory.
Can other people hear what Bee recorded?
No. Amazon says transcripts are encrypted with keys only the user’s device holds, so nobody else, including Amazon employees, can access them unless the user shares them. The app also prompts wearers to ask permission before recording others.
Is the Bee Eclipse better than the Plaud Note?
It depends on your use case. The $99.99 Eclipse is cheaper than the $159 Plaud Note and claims a 21-day battery, but the Plaud devices are established products with known recording quality. The Eclipse has not shipped yet, so independent comparisons will have to wait.
Related reading: For more on the AI wearables race, see our explainers on Ray-Ban Meta Audio and Meta Muse Spark Open, and for always-on AI agents in general, OpenAI Dots explained.