Amazon Echo Show 15 review: A big, Alexa

Amazon has released its latest gadget, the Amazon Echo Show 15. This device allows users to video chat with friends and family members who are not in the same room thanks to a built-in camera on top of Alexa’s screen. The touchscreen display is similar to other Amazon products like the Fire Tablet or Kindle eReader line.

The “echo show 8” is a device that has been released by Amazon. It’s a big, Alexa-enabled device that can be used for watching videos and playing games. This review will cover the features of the device, as well as its pros and cons.

Amazon’s newest and biggest Echo Show is the $249.99 Echo Show 15. This 15.6-inch Alexa smart display was meant to hang on the wall rather than sit on a desk or nightstand, unlike prior incarnations.

The Echo Show 15 excels as a digital center for the entire family, with a bigger screen that makes it easy to locate information of all kinds — from news to weather to calendar notifications. With the biggest screen ever, it provides plenty of room to stretch out and serves as an excellent display for consuming material.

We feel this is one Show you won’t want to miss after spending some time with this new gizmo hanging in our kitchen area. This is why.

For your wall, a large Alexa display

The Echo Show 15 is the largest Alexa display ever, and it looks fantastic, yet its huge size may not be suitable for everyone.

Who, what, and how are the questions that need to be answered.

Who this is for: Anyone searching for a larger, Alexa-enabled screen to better access calendars, notes, or reminders, operate a smart home, or stream entertainment would appreciate the Echo Show 15.

What you should know: The Show 15 has the largest and clearest display of any Alexa smart screen, but its ability to hang on the wall is the major difference. However, unlike the Show 10, it cannot constantly keep the display facing you, and it does not provide best-in-class audio quality like the Show 8, 10, or fourth-generation Echo.

How it compares: The Show 15 is equipped with Amazon’s most recent chipset, making it even smarter than previous Alexa-enabled gadgets. Its new shape, however, implies it is eventually designed to be hung on your wall, while it may also be combined with an accessories stand, thanks to its faster completion time on any request. Given the sheer size, it’s not as countertop-friendly as the Show 5, 8, or 10, so the 15.6-inch smart display may seem too huge if you use the $30 stand. So long as you have the room, the Show 15 succeeds as a home hub, with a fantastic display and superb calendar, list, and reminder functions.

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In terms of sheer size, the Echo Show 15 dwarfs the 10-inch Nest Hub Max, Show 10, Show 8, Show 5, and Nest Hub. That’s because it’s made to be hung on the wall, so it’ll mix in better with your existing décor. The Show 15 looks clean with a black frame, white matte bezel, and 15-inch screen in the centre, and reminds us of Samsung’s The Frame TV with fewer bezels. The 15 features separate controls for muting the microphones, volume up and down, and a shutter that you slide to block the camera, much like every other Echo Show.

Before you can say “Alexa,” you’ll need to perform some drilling or screwing, and the package contains a mounting template, a wall mount, anchors, and screws. We were done in approximately 15 minutes after we identified a space, agreed on the direction of the Show 15 (you may pick between vertical and horizontal), bored four holes, and firmly hung the smart display.

If drilling into a wall isn’t your style, third-party accessory producers on Amazon offer a few options. The aforementioned $30 stand is an option, albeit it seems flimsy in comparison to the product’s total weight. The Show 15 is slimmer than the Show 5, 8, or 10, but it also takes up more physical space and weighs more. Other stands, including one that attaches beneath a cabinet and enables the display to pivot, are available, but we haven’t had a chance to try them.

This leads us to two issues with the wall-mounting approach. The power wire will most likely be hanging toward the outlet when this is installed. You’d have to either run the wire through the inside of your wall or have a closer outlet installed to repair this. But let’s face it: Not only is it not ideal, it’s a whole lot of time and work. Instead, we recommend using a cable cover to give a more streamlined appearance.

Also, since the Show 15 does not swivel, it will be locked in whichever position you place it in. Vertical scrolling provides you a little more area to browse, but it also means black bars at the top and bottom of your text. Horizontal, on the other hand, takes up more room but is excellent for viewing television and movies.

The Amazon mount that came with our Show 15 didn’t have swivel capabilities, which we feel would add value to the $249.99 price tag.

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The huge 15.6-inch full HD display on the Echo Show 15 ensures an ultra-sharp, bright, and colourful display. Despite the fact that most recent tablets and laptop displays have incredibly thin borders, Amazon didn’t cut down the bezels here, which we believe is an intriguing design move.

Both the text and the graphics on this display have a lot of detail. For example, we put the Echo Show 15 vertically on our wall beside paintings in picture frame mode. It can cycle between photographs from your Amazon account, a collection of images in various sorts of galleries, and photos from your Facebook account at the moment. Unfortunately, there is no choice for Apple Photos or Google Photos. In this setting, though, the collection of winter-themed photographs exhibited spun smoothly and seemed clear and brilliant.

Similarly, there were no blurring or blooming while interacting with buttons on the screen. Amazon also stretched out some of the essential pieces due to its size. Buttons are more apparent, and menus aren’t as cramped as on previous Echo Show devices, even if they still take a second or two to reply.

The Echo Show’s 15-inch display also allows it to function as a television. We’ve always thought that the lower Show sizes were too little to view a whole movie on. When the Show 15 is in landscape mode, it resembles a contemporary kitchen television. We loved viewing an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Hulu; the same can be said for programming from Hulu Live TV and Amazon Prime.

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Amazon’s face recognition software, Visual ID, is already available on the Show 5, 8, and 10, but it truly shines on the Show 15 and Show 10. When you approach the device, it detects who is in the frame and customizes the screen or recommendations to their preferences.

Visual ID is also completely optional, so if you’re concerned about privacy, you don’t have to use it with the Echo Show 15. However, there is some good news: Because everything is processed and validated on the device, your face scans will not be transferred to the cloud and will stay on the Echo 15.

Visual ID takes two attempts to set up, but the procedure is quite similar to Face ID on an iPhone or iPad. You’ll do several circular rotations and rotate your head in a few different ways. It’s also the first taste of a dismal and underwhelming camera experience. The Show 15 costs $249.99, but it only has a 5-megapixel camera, putting it below the Show 10 and even the Show 8. This perplexed us since each of those cameras had a 10-megapixel lens that gives far more information.

However, if we ignore the camera’s performance, Visual ID did create the experience that best met our requirements. It was aware of our musical preferences and favorite news sources, and it works in tandem with another key aspect here: widgets.

Widgets allow you to quickly leave a message for someone, keep track of future activities, and even operate your smart home. They’re also available in two sizes: tiny and large, albeit the larger ones will result in fewer on the screen. You may now pick from 14 predefined widgets that appear on the bottom half of the main screen in portrait mode or the right side in landscape mode. The majority of the apps are straightforward, such as a calendar, sticky notes, weather, fast smart home controls, shopping, and music. Surprisingly, the widget panel has a little tab that should allow you to shut it with a swipe, but it seems to be a design decision in practice.

Our aim is that, like Alexa Skills, Amazon will continue to extend its Widgets and offer it up to third parties. Because you can open picture-in-picture for cameras in your house, the smart home widget is one of our personal favorites. For example, we may use our Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 or a floodlight camera to open up the view. The film may be overlay on the primary screen or even another window using picture-in-picture. It comes in helpful a lot.

The Echo Show 15 is a great way to keep track of your family’s schedule. You’ll simply need to make sure you’re using the correct accounts, and if you find an event that interests you, you can touch it to launch the complete calendar app. To-do lists and stickers work the same way, and you can even tag them to enable a particular user to engage with them. This can also connect to Visual ID profiles, so if we leave a remark for a family member, it will appear when the Show 15 detects them.

Alexa has good sound and enough of power.

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The Show 15 is less stunning in this respect than the $249.99 Echo Show 10 or the $99 fourth-generation Echo, which all produce amazing, room-filling sound. This is owing to the thinner design’s nature. The wall-mountable Alexa display, like other flat panel TVs, only features stereo speakers to power the sound experience.

The Show 15 was put near the kitchen in the family room area of our apartment for our testing, and Alexa’s replies were fortunately clear and loud. It doesn’t have omnidirectional sound like the fourth-generation Echo or the Show 10, but it does have sound coming from all sides.

When it came to music playing, we found the audio to be more weak than when it came to spoken word. When we played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” we got a wall-of-sound track that started with a loud blare of guitars, piano, drums, and sax, but didn’t show itself as completely on the Show 15 as it did on our other speakers and headphones. The mix was still clear and sharp, but it lacked the harrumph and punch of the original. With accurate pronunciation and concise audible voices, more useful use cases such as listening to a recipe, a news briefing, live TV, or a favorite movie are much better.

When it comes to audible and visual reactions, the Show 15 is the first Alexa smart display powered by Amazon’s newest microprocessor, the Amazon AZ2 processor. This not only keeps things moving in terms of smart displays, but it also guarantees that Alexa responds quickly. This includes basic requests such as the weather, a math question, or a statistic, as well as more complicated requests such as smart home commands, Amazon.com purchases, and recipe ideas.

Overall, the Alexa experience on Show 15 is comparable to that of other Alexa devices. Parts of typical requests or instructions may be handled locally instead of being routed to the cloud using the AZ2 processor. The Show 15 requires Wi-Fi, much like any other Alexa device, and the dual-band antennae performed nicely with our Eero 6 Pro test system. Just keep in mind that, unlike the Show 10, the Show 15 lacks a Zigbee hub, so although it can manage your smart home devices, it can’t form a network to keep them connected.

We’d also want to highlight the Show 15’s capability as a digital home center. It’s an ultra-functional and personalized experience with the Show 15 positioned in a central location and Visual ID for family members. You may use it as a shared family calendar, to send messages to one another — “Please take out the trash tomorrow” or “Remember to pick up your dry cleaning” — or even to ask for assistance preparing a dinner with recipes. The 15.6-inch display makes it simple to view all of this information and do activities at the same time.

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We adore the Show 15 because it’s unlike any other smart display. In terms of audio and camera quality, it’s not the greatest Echo Show on the market, but it more than makes up for it with a sleek design and a whole new set of use cases.

The Show 15 costs $249.99 and is a digital home hub that functions as a smart control panel, a picture frame, and an Alexa voice control center. We only want to make sure you have a place for it and are willing to commit to hanging a smart speaker on your wall.

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