Now that Amazon launched a landslide of devices I finally have a review of the Echo Show 5.
Typically when one of Amazon’s products ship in the United States we get them in Canada about three to six months later though that waiting period is getting shorter and shorter. And now we have another member of the Amazon Echo family.
To most people the Amazon Echo universe has pretty well won the smart assistant war at this point as Amazon has aggressively pushed in to the market leaving Google behind in a lot of ways. Not that Google isn’t trying. They have bought other companies to help them compete and continue to release Google Home (now Nest) products.
To be honest the Google Home devices have always been more interesting to me but Amazon devices just seem to be more useful.
The Amazon Echo Show 5 is one of the best voice assistant devices released to date and in my opinion the killer device Amazon needs to completely dominate the voice assistant race.
Up until the release of the Echo Show and the more recent Echo Show 5 the only way to interact with Alexa was purely through voice. The Echo Show 5 takes it to another level.
The 5 is far more interactive. Before you could call other Echo owners with your Echo device, now you can call them with video (which, by the way, the built in camera comes with a cover to block it from possibly trying to record video of you without permission). And the audio you will hear from the 5 is pretty decent though it can’t hold up to it’s older sibling, the Echo Plus. Skype is also available though the device which is also nice.
A little less fancy but something I really appreciate is the clock (which of course Amazon just announced an Echo mini that has an LED clock built in). Since I have an Echo device on my desk anyway it’s nice to have a clock feature.
Possibly the best part of the 5 is it’s built in smart device controller, for which I had originally bought the Echo Plus. The 5 adds an extra dimension as you can visually control your smart devices on the 5’s built in control panel. A really hand feature especially if one has several devices in their home. On top of that you still have the option to use voice commands.
I have really enjoyed using the 5. It’s just the right size and with the ability to upload your photos to Amazon you can create a slideshow behind your clock so you can always see your dog smiling back at you (as mine is).
I do believe this will replace the regular Echo in the future and, I truly hope, Amazon will lower the price of it’s bigger sibling (the Show) as here in Canada it is a prohibitive $299.99. The Show 5 is at, what I think is, a great price of $99.99 here. I think that’s a lot of value for what the device is capable of.
I highly recommend this to anyone getting into the smart home scene or those already in it and expanding the devices in their house.
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