Gadget Review: Amazon's Echo Show 8 has a smart lesson for your home

The UAE real estate market is booming, we hear. And smart homes are increasingly catching on. Everything from drawing the blinds, closing the garage doors and monitoring security to switching the lights, gadgets and appliances on and off, and even ordering the groceries is increasingly being done digitally and often automatically. But to do all this, not only do you need the right smart lights, appliances, garage doors, et al, you also need a digital “brain” — a sort of central control device of all things automated and digital in your smart home.

And with the 2024 Echo Show 8 with Alexa smart voice assistant built in, Amazon has the answer.

Like all other Echo devices, Alexa forms the core of the Echo Show 8, which, as the word ‘Show’ in its name suggests, is an Echo device with a screen. The device offers a range of interactive features, leveraging the visual display to provide not only voice feedback but also visual elements. We asked Alexa to display news updates, play music videos and show weather reports on our test device, and marvelled at how useful sticking an 8-inch display on an Echo device could be.

We could not test out the various Alexa smart home features that the Echo Show 8 is useful for, but if you are a proud smart homeowner, you can control your devices directly from the screen.

The Echo Show 8 serves as a hub for smart home devices, controlling compatible lights, thermostats, cameras and other gadgets. With the inclusion of a Zigbee hub, the Echo Show 8 can connect to a wide array of smart home products without the need for additional hubs, simplifying the setup process for users with various smart devices.

For users who enjoy automating their lives, the Echo Show 8 supports Alexa Routines. You can create customised routines that automate daily tasks. For example, you can set a “Good Morning” routine that turns on your lights, starts your coffee maker, and shows you the day’s weather. The visual interface on the Echo Show 8 makes it easier to manage and customise these routines compared to other similar devices that do not have screens.

The 2024 version of the Echo Show 8 also supports video calls using Alexa, which is a major advantage over other Echo products without a screen. Thanks to the 13MP camera, video quality was very good, and the camera’s motorised movement ensured that I was always positioned correctly during calls.

Moreover, the Echo Show 8 allows users to stream videos from platforms like YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. And while an 8-inch screen will hardly replace a larger TV, we found it perfect for quick viewing sessions in-between tasks while at the work desk. With the Alexa integration, it was easy to ask the device to play our favourite shows or movies, and the touch interface made managing media content simple.

And that touch-enables 8-inch HD display is one of the key features of the Echo Show 8. With a resolution of 1280 x 800, the display offers vibrant colours and crisp images, making it ideal for viewing photos, or checking the weather.

When it comes to the sound, the Echo Show 8 impressed us greatly, given its size. Equipped with dual 2-inch speakers and passive bass radiators, it delivered clear sound with decent depth. Of course, it won’t replace a dedicated speaker system for audiophiles, but set it up on your worktable or bedside and the sound is more than sufficient for daily tasks like listening to music and podcasts. The quality of the sound not only ensures clear video calls, but also makes it a great device to wake up to when using the alarm function and setting it to the music of your choice. Our mornings started on a very bright and musical note with the Echo 8 around.

And if you want to expand the audio setup of your home or to play your music through a more powerful system, the Echo 8 can be connected to other Alexa-enabled devices or Bluetooth speakers via the Alexa app to offer more flexibility.

We felt the 8-inch HD screen offers the perfect balance between being large enough for an enjoyable viewing experience and compact enough to fit on desks, kitchen counters or nightstands. The screen is vibrant, sharp and responsive, which is great for activities like video calls or following recipes.

The build quality is robust, with a combination of matte plastic and fabric accents. The front of the device is dominated by the screen, while the speakers are placed behind it and towards the bottom. The materials used felt durable, and the fabric speaker grille — our test mule came in all-black —adds a touch of sophistication.

A new and commendable feature on the new Echo Show 8 is motion tracking on its camera, which automatically adjusts to follow the user during video chats, ensuring that the user remains in frame. This upgrade significantly enhanced our video calling compared to previous versions of the device.

The Echo Show 8 also includes a physical camera lens cover, allowing users to block the camera when privacy is a concern — a helpful feature for anyone cautious about their security.

An ambient light sensor adjusts the screen’s brightness to match the room’s lighting, providing a better viewing experience at any time of day.

One trick that Amazon missed on the Echo Show 8, however, is to offer Zoom for video calls. With the proliferation of Zoom, this lack of support for the format does waste a lot of potential of the otherwise excellent video calling setup and leave something to be desired.

Another thing we desired while using the Echo Show 8 was for Alexa, i.e. Amazon, to be less pushy. We get it, in the end Alexa is all about Amazon trying to get you to spend more with it, and we don’t begrudge them that. But there can be subtler ways of going about it than repeated onscreen pop-ups recommending that we buy the book when we are in the middle of seeing the movie, or a similar intrusive break in our music listening session to suggest some other product. It took a lot of toggling and fidgeting through menu options to disable these “product tips” and “smart advices”.

With all its features and improvements, the Dh599.99 Echo Show 8 should have been a five-star device, but the lack of Zoom and Alexa’s pushiness limits it to 4. The device itself is the best Echo we have tested.

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Amazon Alexa Echo Show 8

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