Amazon Echo Show
22 reviews
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This is possibly the worst piece of tech I've purchased. Looks good but so many glitches in the software make it barely usable and all I wanted was digital clock and play music on voice command. A number of menu items just won't load. Many factory reset later and I'm less impressed every minute! Show details
Glitchy, unresponsive and a waste of money. Recently changed to Alexa after years of Google Hub and other Google devices and can say I regret the decision. Almost to the point of binning Show 8 and Spot and going back to Google devices Show details
Unless you want this as a speaker for your phone's Spotify (or similar) don't bother buying it. I have had the one I bought originally 'replaced 3 times. Worked fine for a couple of months and then the same software glitch starts. The clock doesn't… Read more
display properly, keeps flashing through a cycle over and over (see pic). If it is anywhere within your field of vision when either working on your PC or watching TV, or whatever - the flashing and turbulence on screen will annoy you. Then, when you text or call Amazon CS you will get the run around. The latest attempt at resolution took 3 phone calls over three days. And an online chat with a total of five different 'agents' who kept passing me to the next. Now that is bad enough, but each of those agents, by phone or by online chat, all wanted to know what the problem was. So I needed to repeat each and every time I was transferred. No Customer Care whatsoever. Dreadful. Outcome - yes, they are sending me another one!! I don't want it. I wanted a refund but unfortunately "Our system doesn't allow us to do that". Steer clear of Echo Show 5 and steer clear of Customer service. Don't believe me" Google "Echo show screen cycling problem"
Follow-up · Follow Up. Amazon yet again replaced, the already replaced, Echo Show 5 - and I returned the one I had. Plugged it in, and lo and behold, the same persistent problem is there. I sent email to Amazon Cust Serv - asking them not to just read and 'console me' - but try to get my email elevated to someone that actually cares they have a machine… Read more
Rubbish – Easily the most useless piece of electronics I own. It is impossible to get it to play a podcast without looking up on google what to say, and even that doesn’t work most times. It is now just an overpriced alarm clock on my bedside table. Show details
Not worth it – Was looking forward to using the echo show 5 ,but was disappointed in it,can't connect my Spotify through it,even though it says it does,the brightness doesn't adjust to light or no light,I have to adjust brightness manually every night and morning,it's just a glorified clock for me,I wouldn't waste my money on it Show details
Best ever – We love our Echo show. Best thing ever. HD screen, stereo sound, reminders, music, cameras, alerts....and much more features It was easy to set up and Alexa is easy to talk to. It works brilliant with our Ring security system. Even night visions are crystal clear. The Echo show also has an inbuild camera, but it can be shut off. You can call… Read more
friends and family who have the Alexa App or an Echo device with a screen. I wish I have taken a bigger screen version but this will be it for now.
Echo show 15 – It it useless you can't watch your ring security cameras with it Show details
Overpriced digital photo frame with terrible sound quality, lacking basic functions of other Alexa devices – Alexa Echo Show 15 is certainly a big piece of rubbish. I thought the Echo Show 10 was pretty crap for the money but the Echo Show 15 is unbelievably bad value for money. Absolutely terrible sound quality. Have not heard worse sound since my TEAC cassette player in the 70's. I have Echo show 6, 8 and 10, studio and many dots throughout the house… Read more
and Echo Auto in 2 vehicles. They all sound reasonable but this thing is utter crap. The most expensive Alexa device in the range with BY FAR the poorest audio quality. Cannot RESUME. So if you start listening to an audiobook a song or podcast, forget pausing and later continuing. You have to search for it all over again. It's basically a digital photo frame that plays SOME of your saved images (not all) and offers very little functionality beyond that. Don't waste your money.
Built in obsolescence – Built in obsolescence lasted 13 months I will stick with google nest that continue to work
Bargain Basement – I was fortunate to pick up a brand new Echo Show 15 from Cash Converters, still sealed in the box for less than $170. I have had it now about 4 months and absolutely love it. She notifies me when someone is at my door (Ring Doorbell). I use it for shopping lists, watch Netflix while cooking dinner, radio via iheart, sticky notes. She reminds… Read more
me of events on my calender, birthdays etc. A timer for cooking, calls my phone when I forget where I left it. Step my step recipes, local weather, information searches, turns my TV on and off, and so much more. I bought the tilting stand from Amazon with tidy cord wind behind. I have it in my kitchen and I love the big display. Makes it easy to see. The only down side I have is it hasn't learned my habits. I have to always tell it, which radio station I want to listen to, whereas my google home only has to be told to 'hey google turn on the radio' and it finds my favourite station right away. Other than that it is used daily and I wouldn't be without it.
This is good but can be much better – Better when compared to other similar products in the market. Quality: The build looks premium and the buttons function well with just a click. User Interface: - Simple menu and navigation features felt good except for the speed - Access to Prime Video and web version of Youtube are good. Performance: - The responsiveness of the user interface… Read more
is slow. Sometimes felt annoyed.
Video: - The web version of Youtube hangs in between when played any video. - Primevideo crashes all of a sudden in between a video play.
Sound: - Deep rich Bass sound is good but presence of no Treble is a minus. All songs sound the same. With the extra Bass, vocals are not clear to the ear.
Alexa commands: - Sometimes Alexa doesn't respond to our commands. Not sure as to why. It just becomes silent at times.
Connectivity: - Strong Internet connection is a must if you are planning to purchase this device. I placed this device in my bedroom where the wifi range is about 30% and experienced connectivity issues while streaming music / video.
Cons: An option to close all open apps could have been better. Alexa didn't have that skill. It would have been better if that option was default as part of the OS.
Price: The price is competitive when compared to other branded products in the same segment. So definitely a value for money purchase.
I love this thing! – I had the smaller echo show 5 which was a gift and i quite liked it, but mostly i used it as just a clock and for its ‘alexa’ capabilities. This one was on sale recently so i decided to upgrade since has a bigger screen, this really makes a big difference, mine is located in the same place my old echo 5 lived- across the room (i have a fairly… Read more
large bedroom) so a small 5 inch screen being 5 meters away wasn’t really useful for much more than a clock and ‘alexa’ use. But the bigger size here lets me take full advantage of more features, I can watch Netflix on it which frees up my phone for whatever else I want and the bigger speaker on it means it sounds louder and from what i can tell its a better quality sound too.
When its on standby, I have a selection of favourite photos that play and it always makes me smile when I walk past. Since I’m no longer using the 5, i moved it to the living room and we now can use it to communicate with whoever is out there, you can send an ‘announcement’ or even have a little video chat kind of thing going on, I’m not entirely sure how useful that would be but it was fun to test out.
It looks really beautiful on my shelf and one of the things i have always loved about the echos is the way the clock function brightness works, I cannot stand having a bedroom clock that emits too much light, I like a very dark room when I sleep and the light detection on these is absolutely flawless, in the day its bright and clear with a full screen of colour and vibrance, but at night it dims to nothing but the digits which are only very gently lit, just the right amount to see the time but not enough to burn your retinas like when you pick up your phone to check the time in the dark. Most people probably wouldn’t think twice about this kind of thing, but before I had an echo I actually went through several bedside clocks looking for something that wasn’t so bright and to get that in this device was an excellent bonus.
Of course you will also have full use of the usual ‘Alexa’ commands and I highly recommend looking into what you can do with them if you’re not already familiar. Smart lights these days are so cheap and theres no reason to ever touch a light switch again. Its one of my small thrills to be all comfortable in bed and feeling sleepy after some reading and NOT have to get up to turn the light off, “Alexa, turn on my Monday schedule!” “Alexa turn off the light!” Now I can go to sleep knowing I’ll be woken by my favourite song gently getting louder with the light slowly fading on to coincide with my song waking me. What a time to be alive!
Glorified speaker & clock – Don't expect much more than the bare minimum. Often repeats your entire question despite older devices having a 'shorten response' feature. Works fine as a speaker, timer and clock. However, you will find it's more 'complex' features like looking up recipes, doing Google searches and word lookups a longer more frustrating process. There is a reason you see these products significantly cheap on resale websites. Show details
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Awesome unit, step up from smaller Show 5 – I imported 2x Echo Show 8's from UK. They are awesome displays for family photos, audio is x10 better and are otherwise identical to the smaller Show5's. Yes, the clock display cant be set to full screen. Minor grumble. Show details
Basic smart assistant but with some compromises – I already had a Google Assistant in the kitchen but one issue with this was it wouldn’t interface with my RING video cams. However, after seeing Amazon advertising its Echo Show 5 on special (reduced from $129 down to $49) it seemed too good an opportunity to pass by. RING is also owned by Amazon and the Echo Show interfaces perfectly with these… Read more
cams.
Installing the Echo in my study was straightforward. Download the app and follow the instructions (although I believe it can be setup without the app too). There were no hiccups and I had it up and running in a very short space of time. The screen is relatively small with a viewing area of around 125mm x 63mm approx. And a 480p resolution. I found the screen to be clear and bright and if you don't need the inbuilt video camera, there is a physical shutter which will you can slide across to block it. Overall, the whole device is around 15cm W x 9cm H x 8cm D. The power cable projects another 4cm out from the back so the closest you can have the screen away from a wall would be 12cm. The power cable then connects to a fairly large wall plug/power supply. If you put it on a dual outlet wall socket, you will only have room for a relatively small plug to go in the adjacent socket. Also on the back is a 3.5mm socket for connecting an external speaker along with a micro USB socket for attaching wired ethernet (if you don’t have access to wireless). There are two physical volume controls on the top marked "+" and "-" as well as another button to mute the microphone. The casing is white while the back, top and sides of the unit are covered in a soft grey textured fabric (there is a dark charcoal available too) and the whole unit sits on a large soft “rubber” pad so it won’t move nor mark your furniture surface.
Command wise its just like any other “smart assistant”, where you just say “Alexa” to activate it followed immediately by the command/question. Instead of “Alexa”, you can also set it to respond to “Amazon”, “Computer” and “Echo”. Screens can be themed and I have mine set to show the time and weather. Individual customisations are all controlled by the phone app. Also, many of the settings can be accessed on the Echo Show screen itself by pulling down (with your finger) from the top of the screen. Unfortunately, with many settings comes many choices and there is a lot of fiddling trying to get the settings you want (or even if they exist). Be prepared to spend some time tweaking the settings. Functionality wise, it works how you would expect. As a user of a Google assistant, the Alexa assistant does seem a little smarter but that’s a very subjective assessment. I also found it to have less false triggering (where it thinks you are talking to it and responds) than my Google Assistant. Screen viewing angles are pretty good and while viewing from extreme angles does impact the image, it is still legible. Using this with my RING cameras was great. I simply had to issue a command like, “Alexa...show me my Driveway” and up would pop a live viewing of that location. Only downside is the lag between issuing the command and it happening as this was around 12 seconds. However, as I have four cameras around the outside of the house, being able to do this was almost worth the (discounted) cost of the device on its own with all other functionality a bonus.
There are, however, two things that really annoy me about it (and which I have never encountered when using a variety of Google Assistants previously). First being the Alexa voice is bassy...like noticeably bassy. Despite having an equalizer setting in the device, this only work with sounds being played (music, videos etc) not the actual Alexa voice. I looked online to see if there was a fix but only encountered other people complaining about the same thing. Its not muffled...just annoyingly bassy. Presumably this relates to the speaker size and its location in a device where they have tried to minimise the overall size.
The second thing relates to the display. This is also another thing I have seen people complaining about too is when my screen automatically scrolls from a clock to a weather display, a type of “online tutorial” rotates across the screen. Eg it says, “Try, Alexa tell me a joke” or “Try, Alexa help me sleep” and on it goes (see image below). This is handy when new to the use of the assistant but surely there is a way to turn it off instead of continuing on in perpetuity. Additionally, I’m receiving a weekly bulletin from Amazon also reminding me of a variety of commands I can give Alexa. At least I can unsubscribe from that. Why does Amazon not provide a way to turn off the visual tutorial? There does not appear to be anyway to leave it on a single screen (eg clock) as it wants to keep automaticity scrolling through screens.
Overall, I would probably recommend it ...but only because of the discounted price I paid. If I paid the RRP of $129 (although I think Amazon has now reduced this to $99), I probably wouldn't. For what I paid, Im mostly happy with my purchase.
Good device but is missing some key features, better with the US Alexa accent – The device is attractive if not a little chunky, but vastly superior to the strange industrial design of the Google competitor device. One key issue with the device relates to an inability to control the size and formatting of the clock. On the smaller echo device the clock can be altered to suit your application. Due to this omission this device… Read more
and the larger 10" Echo Show cannot really be used as a bedside clock.
I'd also suggest an amoled sceen would use less power and look much better than the screen they have used that is completely backlit and likely used an LCD panel.
Amazon needs to do better with Alexa, the Australian accent and voice is an abomination, it's common and irritating and not nearly as polished and pleasant as the US and UK accents. I have her set to the US voice as I simply can't stand the Australian voice.
Good mid-range smart device for home – Got this echo show 8 for a few months now and very happy with it. Especially you can use drop-in function between your Alexa app on your phone to this device and start a video call. Also, watching youtube and have good quality sound out of this device. Or to use for the baby monitor as well as you can enable guard mode with the built-in camera.
Speaker with a Screen – I decided to buy this to accompany my home's ring door bell because I did not buy the ring chime. It does announce if there is motion or someone rings the doorbell, however I was hoping it would make a loud chime sound. With regards to the sound quality, Google Home mini is still superior and sounds better. If you have a lot of amazon devices,… Read more
this one is the smart speaker for you. I like that it displays the weather for 1 week if asked, displays lyrics to songs. A surprise for this is it can call your friends amazon devices.
A handy little gadget – We enjoy our Amazon Echo Show 5, a very useful tool to have in a family home. Plays music, updates us on news, can video call, see photos as well as use as a timer in the kitchen. Definitely worth investing in one.
Great little gadget – Purchased this for my partner for Christmas. Was significantly cheaper than the google home with a screen equivalent. Cannot fault it! Does everything you’d expect from a home service information system. Can even hook up the ring doorbell and watch YouTube. Show details
Good for smart home control – Not so good as a digital assistant, google is much better. Most questions result in a “i don’t know that one”. Used in conjunction with a Vera hub and Sonos it’s a decent smart device controller (although the lack of grouping capabilities for sonos is frustrating) Show details
Very very good at getting things wrong – This is not a review of the AI, although if it was the AI would also get one star. This is a review of the operating system and the hardware. The Echo Show 5 promising many things but is unable to deliver even basic functions without an error rate that makes it's usefulness practically non existent. Some things the hardware would easily be… Read more
capable of but cannot do due to the operating system include;
1. The Echo Show 5 cannot leave the time permanently displayed. Yes it's true, you may think this is a joke, but check the reviews and you will quickly find that this is a feature that has been requested since it was introduced yet has failed to materialize. The Echo Show 5 still cannot be left on a simple clock display and must display other things users do not wish to see with no way to turn off the suggestions to "Ask Alexa" for some random stupid thing that you would only ask as a joke.
2. It cannot leave a light switch displayed. Ask Alexa to turn on or off the light and if she is successful she will display a control switch and dimmer slide. It's not perfect (no color control) but it's good to have because instead of asking her to do 3 things (turn on the light 100% white) and risk her not understanding, i can just ask her 2 things (lights on,white) and then adjust the brightness with the slider. So I think 'great, maybe i can at least use this screen thing as a light switch'?! Nope, no can do. If you ask Alexa to display the light switch controls she is clueless, and that's the general theme here. She can't even manage it as a one off, and there is certainly no way to get anything the user wants to stay on the screen, this included.
3. The "Do Not Disturb" mode is not fool proof as the fools at Amazon can remotely send updates that cause your unit to reboot in the middle of the night and then cheerily start announcing that they are "ready for set up." This is annoying if you have one, if you have them in the babies room, bedroom, lounge room, kitchen, garage, bathroom, outside laundry etc. You'll find yourself ripping the power cables out of all of them just so you can go back to bed (Ok, I know I was silly to buy the promise, I have been badly disappointed.)
4. She cannot do basic internet searches. Ask for the Wikipedia for Custard and she say, "Sorry, I don't know that one". I've gotten so used to this reply that I've stopped asking her for basic things. She can play music, but I don't need a screen for that and her speaker is underwhelming.
So, some of these things are specific to the Echo show 5 but the "Do not Disturb" fail happened to the dots and the plus also, and all of them are equally useless at basic internet searches.
If you decide to get one after reading this review, you have been warned, good luck.
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