The third-gen Echo show 8 is very hands-on
Expected Availability of an Echo Hub in the Next-Generation of Smart Home Devices and Other Electronics: Predictions for Early 2019
While I’d love to have a device in my home that I could use for a few hours a day, I’m not sure if it will be useful to add it to the Echo lineup. It will be available for pre-order early this year. There is more information in this post.
Tapping on some of the smart home devices in the widgets does bring up a side screen for deeper controls, though. So, if you’re using it for smart home control, you can do so all from the main screen, making the process quicker. Echo Show devices don’t traditionally do transitions all that well, so this is a good UI implementation.
Available to preorder soon and shipping later this year, the Echo Hub will come with a wall-mount bracket, power adapter, and six-foot cable (USB-A to C). Amazon will sell decorative frames in wood, white (which can be painted), and metallic for $19.99 each, and the tabletop stand will cost $29.99.
Amazon Smart Home Widths: How Many Devices are Needed? A Review of a New Place to Start a Smart Home
The widgets include icons or larger group tiles for your favorite devices, cameras, climate, locks, and security (arming or disarming a Ring security system). You can customize the screen, and along the side, a rooms panel gives you access to other defined rooms in the house and the option to run Routines directly from the panel.
The company worked to bring down the time between when a screen is touched and when a device responds. Locally connected devices over Thread, Matter, Bluetooth, or Zigbee respond very quickly — “as fast as a light switch,” he says.
Two-way audio can be used to talk to anyone at your video doorbell or via Drop In with Echo devices, thanks to the built in speakers and microphone array. You can also use Alexa voice control, listen to audio, or watch video. At launch, the company will support Prime Video, along with others.
Limp says Amazon designed this device for its “best customer,” those with 20 or more connected smart home devices who perhaps find it all a bit too much to manage scrolling through endless device lists in the Alexa app.
I recently reviewed the Brilliant smart home control panel, which has a similar function as this (again without the hub features) but at a much higher price point ($400). Limp is not wrong that these devices are expensive. They are very cheap in the pro-installation range.
A new option called Map View allows you to build a Digital Version of your Home’s Floor Plan and control the devices in the room by tapping on them.
It is a really good time, says Limp. “If I want to change the thermostat, I just tap on it, and the controls just pop up. You can turn on a bedroom light with just taps and the controls, I don’t need to set it up. It’s a different paradigm; it’s really interesting.”
The approach is very logical; Amazon isn’t the first to do this, but it does make a lot of sense. It means you don’t have to remember the exact name of the light to the right of the sofa; you can see it and tap on it.
The map view will only be available on compatible lidar-equipped devices in the US later this year, but only if you have an older iOS device. It is going to come to the hub early next year.
Amazon.com’s AZ2 processor and Room Adaption Technology: A Test Room at the Echo Show 15 Demo Room in Arlington, Virginia
I didn’t get to try this shift from ambient mode (showing a clock or pictures) to the widgets, as there were always too many people crowded around the thing, but I did try the new adaptive content feature on a nearby Echo Show 8 that has a similar function of showing different content when you are further away from when you are up close, and it adjusted reasonably quickly as I approached.
While it’s clearly designed to be wall-mounted, using it on a tabletop feels like a good alternative, although you have to pay $29.99 for a Sanus stand (the same company that makes the Show 15 accessories).
Dave Limp, the head of Amazon.com, said at a hardware event this week that the third-gen Echo Show has Amazon’s new AZ2 processor, which makes it 40 percent faster. And it certainly felt snappier in my minute or so of playing with it in the demo room at Amazon’s new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.
The smart display has a new look with glass that is edge-to-edge and a bigger speaker that promises better audio. Heather Zorn, VP of the voice activated assistant, told me that it is getting spatial audio processing technology to boost its music capabilities, which will be similar to the echo studio’s sound capabilities.
New room adaption tech also “senses the acoustics of the room and fine-tunes playback for optimal sound,” according to Amazon’s blog post. We couldn’t put this to a test in the demo room.
The camera (still 13 megapixels) has been relocated to the middle (why did it take so long?), which should make it more usable for Zoom calls, something the current version does relatively well for a smart display. The camera also enables a neat new feature called Adaptive Content, which changes how it displays content based on how close you are. This should make it a better glanceable display and more effective as a touch screen, as it presents a more touch-friendly UI as you get up close.
New quick-access buttons on the homescreen will help with this, too. They use the same technology as the Echo Show 15’s widgets, bringing up the weather and other info with one tap. The widgets didn’t seem to be fully optimized for the display yet, though, looking a bit like iPhone apps on an iPad screen.
