The Good: It doesn’t take up as much surface space as the larger versions (duh). The screen is helpful in a room like the kitchen. You can interact with smart home devices using the screen, for instance controlling brightness of lights with a slider. This can be found for $50 or less multiple times a year.
The Bad: The microphone array is terrible in comparison to almost every other Echo device. The speaker struggles to out perform a third generation Echo Dot. The touch screen is laggy. Video calling is grainy. The device sits at an angle that makes it awkward to use the camera.
Overall: This is a poor replacement for a full size Echo in virtually every situation. The microphone issues are staggeringly bad. The image quality in Echo Show to Echo Show calls is annoyingly bad, and without the $20 stand, it’s nearly impossible to stay in the camera frame without standing over the device. Using the touch screen can be a frustrating experience since it’s not very responsive. Even connecting to a camera, such as a Ring Doorbell, is frustratingly slow and often fails. This is a pass.
Wow, this review was a long time coming! Unlike the big tech sites who play with a device for ten minutes at a conference and crank out a “review”, I like to use a device for a long time before reviewing it. I’ve had the Echo Show 5 sitting in my kitchen for almost a year now, and I can say with certainty this is not the device you want as your primary Echo in your house.
As far back as the announcement of the first generation Echo Show, I was confused why anyone would want a touch screen Echo. The Echo exists primarily so that you don’t have to interact with a physical device, and yet the Echo Show provides you with a touch interface. Yes, there are situations where you may want to say “Show me the _____”, and it is occasionally handy, but those situations are rare unless you mostly use your Echo’s for stupid Alexa tricks. If you’re looking for a device like this, you most likely already own a smart phone, and possibly a tablet, each of which is a device you would use more often than an Echo Show 5. Amazon seems to know this, since you can simply buy a Fire Tablet and set it to “Show Mode” which effectively converts it to an Echo Show when you’re not using it as a much more functional tablet.
The first, and most glaring shortcoming of the Echo Show 5 is the microphone array. The greatest thing about voice assistants these days is that they can hear you! You can talk at a normal volume within a reasonable distance of an Echo or Echo Dot and it will pick up your command and respond in kind. In nearly a year of use, we have found ourselves shouting and cursing at our Echo Show 5 almost daily. This major issue alone should dissuade you from buying an Echo Show 5, but I’ll continue.
Next up is audio quality. The Show 5 is slightly smaller than a third generation Echo laying on its side, but the difference in sound quality is noticeable. The Show 5 barely outpaces a third gen Echo Dot. Our Show 5 sits on the counter in our kitchen, which is part of a large great room, and we rarely lower the volume below 50% because it is hard to hear below that. In comparison, the third gen Echo that used to be in our kitchen was usually at 25-30% and that was sufficient to hear anywhere in the room.
When I bought this, I also bought one for my parents. The idea was that I could save myself the hassle of having to walk them through turning on Skype and answering my video call once a week, and instead just make an Echo to Echo video call. On both ends the video quality has been grainy. This doesn’t seem to be a problem with the larger Echo Show, but we have never gotten what I would call a full HD picture on one of our calls. The other problem is the camera angle. Amazon chose to integrate the camera into the bezel with no way to adjust its positioning, so it points at an awkward upward angle. This is fine if you plan to always make your calls standing in your kitchen with the Show on your counter, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll do that. My parents, for instance, like to sit in front of the Show when we make our calls. I always start the call by telling my kids “Grandma and Grandpa’s foreheads are on the phone!” Without buying the optional $20 stand, the only solution is to pick the Show up, or move it very close to where you are sitting so everyone can have a good view of your nostrils.
Outside of setting the device up, there have been very few times where I have felt compelled to interact with the touch screen. It’s response time is slower than I would like, and the menus are difficult to navigate. I occasionally adjust the brightness of lights with the screen, but even that is difficult, since I either have to navigate to the light, or ask the device to turn the light on first, and then adjust the slider. Something I could do much easier by simply asking for my desired brightness. Even though you can slide out a menu to do so, Amazon is missing a huge opportunity by not creating some kind of smart home dashboard that can be set as the home screen instead of a clock or slide show.
Since this sits in our kitchen, there are ample opportunities to use it for video. My wife has used it to watch Amazon shows while cooking, but given the small screen and the fact that she’s moving around the kitchen, she’d never watch anything but a throw away show on there. Since I can’t install my cable company’s app on the Show, I’ve never watched anything on it. If Amazon would open this up to allow cable applications, I would find it much more useful. Being able to have the morning news playing, or a ball game, while I’m preparing a meal could make this one of the most used devices in my house. Instead I keep an iPad sitting right next to this for that purpose. I had hoped to use the Show 5 to interact with our Ring cameras and doorbell, but the Show 5 almost never connects, and when it does, it’s so slow that if I were trying to answer my door that person would have given up and left by the time it connected.
When it’s not in use, it will flip through news stories and recipes, and other things to try on your Echo Show. The settings menu has about a dozen topics you can turn on or off to control the content you see on the screen. It’s almost overwhelming to configure. I honestly like some of what I see, but actually getting to the content is often a chore. For instance, I recently saw a headline about the international space station that I was interested in. Beneath the headline it instructed me to say “Alexa, show me the space station video.” So I did just that, only to be met with the response “I’m not sure what you want me to show.” This happens all the time. It’s easier to reach over and tap the screen, again defeating the purpose of having my always on, always listening voice assistant.
Many people have suggested using this as a replacement for an alarm clock. I for one don’t invite cameras into my bedroom, but Amazon was nice enough to include a plastic slide to cover the camera in case you’re wary of becoming China’s number one new voyeur show. The major downside to this is that the screen, even in its darkest sleep mode, is brighter than even the brightest LCD alarm clock display I’ve ever seen. And if it’s just the alarm/wake up features you’re after, a Dot will do the job just fine.
In the end it comes down to the simple fact that in a world of smart phones and tablets, I’ve never seen the need for the Echo Show. Yes, there are occasional use cases where it comes in handy (if you’re into Karaoke it displays song lyrics when playing Amazon Music), but they are few and far between. I could envision a situation where there are some fun games that use the screen, but I have yet to come across one. Even if there were positives that could outweigh all the negatives outlined here, I would still recommend buying the infinitely more versatile Fire HD 8 for the same price and using it in Show Mode.