Unveiled at the end of last year in the United States, Amazon’s new Echo Show has been available for a few weeks. Here’s our review of the Amazon Echo Show 15.
We no longer present the Echo Show range from Amazon, it is a range of products with or without a screen and integrating Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. Late last year, Amazon surprised everyone with the Amazon Echo Show 15, a product with an impressive 15.6-inch screen. Indeed, until now, Echo products offered at most a 10-inch screen, it’s 50% more diagonal and suddenly, it changes the perception of an Echo Show a little.
With a 10-inch screen, the first thing you ask yourself is its place in the home. With the Echo Show 15, we already know that it will be on the wall and if possible in a living room such as the living room or the kitchen. Moreover, the first thing we discover with the Amazon Echo Show 15 is its screen and its design. Its screen because 15.6 inches is big, really. And its design because it differentiates itself from the others and it looks like a kind of photo frame but with Alexa.
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But what is it ?
Of course, it’s more than a photo frame, especially with a personal assistant like Alexa. With the Echo Show 15, you can manage your shopping, see the weather, listen to your music, and even watch videos with services like Prime Video, Netflix, Molotov or even Arte. With such a screen size, no more slideshows of widgets, the Echo Show 15 is capable of displaying a lot of information at once. It’s super practical. And speaking of screen, we find a Full HD definition. It is clearly not the thinnest screen on the market but it is clear that it is more than enough to have access to the time, the weather forecast or even your shopping list.
Of course, there are speakers, the Echo Show 15 remains a multimedia device. On the other hand, with such a price, these speakers are far from competing with those of high-end tablets such as Apple’s iPad or Samsung’s Tab S8. Now, given the price, we will say that it is sufficient for short content. We had watched Cobra for example and it was as if we had a small TV in the kitchen. Afterwards, for those who use the Amazon ecosystem and who may have an Echo Show speaker, you can always deport the sound to these speakers with better sound quality.
Designed to be hung on the wall, Amazon offers an optional stand at Sanus, it’s far from being the best solution because the stand takes up a lot of space, but it’s the best solution to avoid making holes at home. right now. For our part, we put it on a radiator that we don’t use (the radiator, not the Echo Show 15). On the other hand, we do not really understand Amazon but the power cord is, in our opinion, too short. Amazon should have offered a much longer cable with an option to wrap it on the back, for example. From our tests, because of this cord, we quickly found ourselves limited in the installation possibilities.
A matter of direction
The Amazon Echo Show 15 can be used in both portrait and landscape mode. Obviously, in portrait mode, if we watch videos, we will quickly be limited by very large black bands. So, instead of a simple support like that of Sanus, we would have liked a dedicated VESA support that allows you to switch between portrait mode and landscape mode. Portrait mode for displaying widgets and landscape mode for enjoying multimedia content. While Amazon’s FireTVs offer almost all streaming applications, we regret being limited on the Echo Show 15 and therefore not finding applications like Disney+ or Apple TV+. Afterwards, to be honest, for videos, we often have better at home. So, on our side, we use it more as a photo frame and we like it a lot (you just have to upload the photos to your Amazon account).
Very quickly, after the first days of testing, we stopped watching videos on it to focus on the photo frame part and functions that we are used to seeing on an Echo Show like all the widgets. The difference with other Echo Shows is that with the size of the screen, several widgets are displayed at the same time and remain on the screen. This allows you to see everything at a glance. Practical. Afterwards, we still have this impression that Amazon has not gone all the way. For example, when you launch Spotify, either you have the player in full screen, or it appears in the menu bar but in this specific case, you lose the possibility of controlling the music. Another possible use concerns the kitchen since the Amazon device offers access to recipes from Marmiton, for example. The Echo Show 15 then allows you to unroll the recipe step by step
The Amazon Echo Show also offers a webcam, of course poor quality, but it is there and above all, it has a rather practical function. In fact, it is rather a technology, Visual ID, which makes it possible to recognize the user and therefore to display the widgets which are linked to him. As a result, the display will adapt and be personalized. Convenient for a family, for example, but once again, we expect to see more than everyone’s calendars. And as we know it can be worrying, all Visual ID data is stored on the device and not on Amazon’s servers. As was already the case with the other Echo Shows, the camera can be used as a surveillance camera. No recording but it allows to take a look when you are not at home.
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