Amazon's Bee Frontier and Eclipse AI note-takers

How Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse differ

Bee is Amazon's line of personal AI devices that listen to conversations and turn them into notes you can act on. The first model was Bee Pioneer. Frontier is its successor as a wearable, while Eclipse is a new design that rides on the back of your phone instead of on your body.

Bee Frontier is on sale now for $74.99

Bee Frontier sits on a soft silicone wristband or clips onto clothing. It is rated IP67 for water resistance, charges over USB-C and lasts up to seven days per charge. Amazon says its two microphones and noise filtering let it pick out the conversation in a busy restaurant or open office.

Bee Eclipse is coming soon from $99.99

Bee Eclipse is about the size of a credit card and snaps onto the back of a phone with magnets. Bee's product page lists it at 4.6mm thin and MagSafe-compatible.

A single charge lasts more than 21 days, and the device can follow both sides of a phone call. Amazon has not given a release date beyond "soon."

What Bee does with a conversation

While it's on, Bee picks out what matters in a conversation and writes it up as a recap, a task list, reminders and a few takeaways. Those notes live in the Bee phone app and a new desktop app, which offers templates for lectures, care plans, brainstorming sessions and more. Bee also looks for themes that come up again and again and suggests goals based on them.

Follow-ups through Gmail, Google Calendar and Outlook

Connect Bee to Gmail, Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook and it can list action items after a meeting, draft a follow-up email or create a calendar invite. It can also link to Apple HealthKit and your photos.

Asking Alexa+ for your notes

Alexa+ is Amazon's AI assistant, offered to everyone in the US and free for Prime members. With Bee linked to it, you can ask Alexa for a meeting summary or your to-do list without picking up your phone. Echo devices use voice ID, so Alexa reads out your Bee notes only to you.

Shopping suggestions on Amazon.com

Linking Bee to Amazon.com lets it turn items you mention into product recommendations. They show up on the Amazon homepage and in the Bee apps, which Amazon pitches as a way to catch things before you forget them.

Do you need Bee Pro at $11.99 a month?

No, the device works on its own: the purchase price already covers recaps of your conversations plus a two-week memory, with nothing more to pay. Bee Pro, at $11.99 a month, is what unlocks the Alexa+ and Amazon.com connections, third-party apps like Gmail, unlimited recent summaries, suggested to-dos and the desktop app. New customers get 30 days of Bee Pro free, so you can try the integrations before paying.

What Bee Pro adds over the device alone

Bee Pro is where the integrations live; the core summaries come with the device. The split between the two looks like this.

How Bee handles audio and transcripts

Amazon says Bee never stores audio. Speech is converted into notes as you talk and then thrown away, and the written transcripts are locked with encryption keys generated and held on the device itself. Processing runs inside Bee Private Compute, an isolated environment that Amazon described in a September post as one that no one, Amazon included, can look into.

One button, an indicator light and auto-off

Both devices turn on and off with a single press and show a light while they are listening. If the room goes quiet, the microphones switch off by themselves after a delay you choose, from 5 minutes up to 24 hours. You can delete transcripts and summaries whenever you like.

Call recording prompts on Bee Eclipse

Each time you start recording a call on Eclipse, Bee prompts you to get permission from the people on the line. Amazon's example is a family phone call to plan a vacation, where Eclipse keeps track of arrival times and favorite restaurants.

Where you can buy Bee and which languages it supports

Amazon.com is the only store Amazon names for Bee, and the announcement says nothing about other countries. Bee's product pages say it supports up to 40 languages and adapts to the one you use most, but they do not list which ones.

The Alexa+ connection also depends on Alexa+ itself, which Amazon offers to everyone in the US. For Eclipse, the next thing to watch is a release date, along with any word on sales outside Amazon.com.

Buy Frontier now or wait for an Eclipse date

Bee now comes in two forms: Frontier, a $74.99 wearable you can buy today, and Eclipse, a phone attachment from $99.99 that has no release date yet. Both summarize what you say and pull out to-dos, and the Alexa+, Amazon.com and app integrations sit behind Bee Pro at $11.99 a month. If you want Bee for its summaries alone, the device covers that with 14 days of memory; the monthly plan only matters if you want Bee wired into Alexa+, Amazon.com or your email and calendar.