Gadgetory

this is a new echo and obviously it's got a screen you may be wondering why do I need a screen in my echo well this is Amazon's echo show it's available this week for about two hundred and thirty bucks and it comes in black and white it's basically a square blocky echo with a 7-inch touchscreen it's also got two two inch speakers and eight microphones so it can hear you from across the room now even though it has a screen it's definitely not a tablet it's big its chunky it's kind of heavy and it always has to be plugged into the wall anyways but no it's not a tablet and even though it's an echo with the screen turns out there's a lot of things you can do with this screen the home screen can show you the time and weather and can cycle through upcoming calendar appointments or trending news stories and you can ask it for more information on any of these things and the show gives you helpful guides which makes it a little easier to use you can use it to watch video but just from Amazon's own prime video or YouTube right now you can use it to manage your shopping or to-do list you can even pull up recipes when you're in the kitchen or you can set multiple timers which seems kind of obvious but it's actually pretty useful because you can then view them on the screen like Alexa show me my timers here are your timers now instead of having to ask for the timers all the time I can just get a visual view of them and then there's all the things that you can do with Amazon's Alexa assistant on other echo devices which the show can do all of them as well you can ask it FAQs you can set timers you can turn lights on and off in your house you can get weather all this other kind of information that we're used to asking the echo for the echo show sounds really good for music in fact it's better than any other echo device before it it's not going to give a solo system a run for its money but it's so easy to use to just ask the echo show to listen to anything you want that I find myself listening to music here more than I use my solo system and then the other big feature that Amazon is using this for is a video calling device you can make video calls from one echo show to another or to a mobile device or from a mobile device to an echo shop it's basically a super simple FaceTime device that just sits in your house and anyone in your home use and then there's this weird feature about it Amazon's calling this drop-in where it allows anybody to connect to your echo show without having you answer the call it's kind of weird and kind of creepy and fortunately it's disabled by default but it does make it very easy for children to use the device ID either hi Dan how you doing I'm good as excited system foggy white expanse and then it slowly fades into the actual video you sound pretty very good I don't think this works really well it is creepy that I can just like jump into your house whenever I feel like it but obviously wouldn't normally give me that access although as your boss I think I might demand it you know it's a good thing that like I'm sitting right next to this and I heard you dannion come in because if I was like a room over I probably wouldn't have heard it and you just be kind of chilling in my kitchen to terrify me when I come in to get some Oreos that is my life goal as you can see video quality is actually pretty good the image was sharp and we didn't have any dropouts during our test but because this is at a fixed angle if you've got it set up and there's a light in the background or a window the camera can't really manage the backlight all that well also if you got it on a high counter because it's tilted up it may be difficult for kids to use it they'd either so this is cool if we both have deco shows but if you don't have an echo show you're supposed to use the Alexa app and I just don't believe that people want to use the Alexa app for videoconferencing like it works for Alexa and echoes but I don't think it works for it's something that people really I want to use otherwise yeah I kind of agree I think that like you know if you want to use it as a video calling device for your kids to their grandparents or something you can convince you know grandparents to install the Alexa app but you're not going to get all your friends onboard that's for sure just probably good thing well dad goodbye make your video thanks dieter Alexa hang up I'm actually a little disappointed that the show can't be more I'd really love to be able to watch Netflix Hulu slang or another video service on it but I can't do that yet it also doesn't always use the fact that it has a touchscreen sometimes I can't touch to select things when I want to I can ask for a local pizza place and it will give me a list of places but then it won't give me a map or how far away or how to get there despite those shortcomings the echo show is still the first device with a screen that I've used that I don't ever have to use my hands doesn't matter if my hands are full or dirty or wet I can just ask the echo show to do things and there's very little setup or learning curve I just turn it on connect it to my Wi-Fi network and log into my Amazon account and away I go the show doesn't have a grid of app icons or an app store to manage like you might find on an iPad but it does have integrations with third-party things that it call skills you can ask it to install these skills without ever having to use your phone or if you ask it to do something that I can't do out of the box it will actually suggest a skill like Alexa show me recipes for chocolate chip cookies the skill all recipes beta can help you with that did you want to enable it yes searching for chocolate chip cookies basically you're supposed to put this in one place in your house and just leave it there so it's ready for video call or for you to ask it something you can probably put it in your bedroom on your nightstand and use it as a super fancy alarm clock but I think most people will find the most use out of this in their kitchen where they can ask it for recipes or set timers it kind of reminds me of those old kitchen TVs people used to have where you might have a TV show or sports game in the background while you were preparing a meal or washing dishes except now you can Spotify or prime video in the background at 230 bucks the echo show is kind of expensive especially if you already have an iPad or other tablet in your kitchen or if you own another echo device but it's better suited to be a home computer for everyone to share than an iPad in many different ways it's a lot simpler to use and it's a lot easier for groups of people to use it as opposed to just one person and I think people will really like it for what it is even if it is a little simple but if I was say a room over you could be checking out my [Laughter] yeah I mean what do you think Dax that's a good take to like I feel like we were