just a few months ago Amazon released the Amazon echo show 8 and the question
I want to answer for you today is which one of these smart displays are you
buying and where does it go in your smart home
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life
and today I'm going to take the frustration out of automation by helping
you make a choice with the Amazon echo show series of products now this can be
a confusing decision and so I wanted to help you place the Amazon echo show
within your home so we'll do a comparative review here between the
devices towards the end I'll talk about where I see each of these devices
actually fitting inside your home let's start the comparison review with a
breakdown of the specifications now likely the most often thing that you
will do with any smart speaker or smart display in your home will be to actually
play music play radio play podcasts really consume content from an audio
standpoint and so the speaker is one of the most important things out there and
when we talk about the speakers on these three devices what you're going to find
is the Amazon echo show 5 is a relatively underpowered speaker this is
a massive increase for the price differential up to the Amazon echo show
8 and there's still an increase here all the way to this Amazon echo show second
generation but it is not that big of a difference between these two they
actually carry very similar speaker systems the one difference that you will
find here is that this is supposed to have Dolby audio capability now honestly
with speakers of this size do you care I don't I can't really tell the difference
this has been a great speaker for me and is my overall preferred but if I have to
pick one of these in terms of a bang for the buck this is clearly where I'm going
with $100 differential between these two
we should talk about the difference in prices right there because there is a
massive difference this is two hundred and thirty dollars us one hundred and
thirty dollars u.s. and a $90 US device now they all go on sale for different
levels so we're not really gonna talk about that but this often gets down to
the price of an echo show v and that's why I say bang for the buck and you'll
hear me say this a few times with this device bang for the buck this is a
really great option the next thing to talk about is the actual screen
capabilities here now this is a 5.5 inch display an 8 inch display and a 10.1
inch display but they all come with different resolutions and again you're
going to hear a very similar set of things being said 960 by 480 small
resolution not HD we go up here to 1280 by 800 and we kind of keep the same
pixels per inch between the two it's very close between these two so you have
really great resolution on a bigger form factor here in what is HD now you move
up here and actually it's the same resolution as the echo show 8 so you
gain those two inches diagonally but you end up with the same resolution and so
your pixels per inch drop considerably on this and so not in a lot of cases
you're not going to notice this but sometimes I have noticed the sharpness
not being there on this device and I think that's one of the reasons we'll
see this updated in late 2020 we're gonna flip
that on its head and I'm gonna talk about a ton of new products that work
with Amazon's voice assistant as well as a number of new features for you thanks
for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life and today I'm going
to take the frustration out of automation by keeping you up to date
with Amazon's voice assistant and their entire suite of smart home products it's
a hard thing to keep trawl of them carry relatively shiny displays and I think
that's really important to think about that's actually one of the reasons I
have this mount here and I have mounts like that for these two devices and I'll
leave links down below because they are very good mounts in terms of how they
structure number one the sound and the look and feel and they give you the
ability to tilt and move that display so you're not catching reflections off of
lots of things now we are an in-depth smart home Channel so we do have to talk
about the difference between the smart home control capability between these
two the 5 and the 8 there is absolutely no difference and 99% of what you're
going to look at there's no difference even over here on the echo show second
generation but what this does contain is a ZigBee hub and that means you can
connect to a few devices so there's igby protocol devices and you'll find a few
sensor types like contact sensors and motion sensors so those are mostly for
doors and for seeing that people are moving around and then you will be able
to connect to some action devices like smart plugs and smart bulbs and smart
switches to be able to turn on and off devices using just that ZigBee hub here
and Amazon's application to control all of that so you get a little bit of extra
but I would say in general what I'm going to tell you is either of these are
totally fine if you're looking for smart home control again 99% of what's out on
the market sits over here and I would rather have you take the hundred dollars
between these two and go buy a smart home hub that is fully capable because
amazon is not yet a fully capable smart home hub they have great connectivity to
just hundreds of thousands of devices and
that's amazing don't get me wrong but they do not have the full smart home
capabilities that you will find on something like Samsung smartthings there
is a significant difference when you compare the cameras on these three
devices now what you'll find is that both of these have physical shutters
actually on the device and this is an absolutely critical component so for me
in a lot of cases I'm not going to put this anywhere I am NOT 100% okay with
someone looking through that camera because the physical shutter cannot be
hacked it cannot be used once you've closed that it is a physical cover so
really important that it's showing up here and one of the reasons again we'll
see a revamp over here on this device now the other thing that's really
different is really big different sorry is that this is a 5 megapixel camera
over here and both of these have one megapixel camera so your video calling
and your ability to take photographs is not very good over here it is better
here but I think overall the whole system you're not going to use for
taking photographs it's not like you can move these around your home and the
other thing is the voice and video calls it's OK in a lot of cases you're limited
more by the bandwidth you have on your Wi-Fi system than you are the cameras so
those are the major differences between these 3 devices everything else pretty
much functions exactly the same now if there's something you are specifically
wondering leave that down in the comments below we respond to every
comment that we can get to and in most cases that's every comment in the day it
was left so I'd be happy to let you know what I know about these 3 devices if you
have a specific question all of the other functions Amazon's voice assistant
routines timers reminders alarms notes lists all of those things are exactly
the same and they're all set up the exact same way and the devices are the
same but where you do start to have differences is in your home you'll want
them in different places so let's talk about where I'm going to put
one of these devices in my smart home the first place that I'm going to talk
about is the bedroom and if you're going to put a smart speaker or a smart
display in your bedroom then I think you really have to maintain the privacy that
comes with these physical shutters that come on these two devices so this is
eliminated for me right away now the difference between these two actually if
you look at the clock difference between these two devices this is maintaining up
in the top left of this device it's just that little clock face right there this
one actually shows a full clock and it is intended to be a smart alarm clock in
a lot of its design choices it's not going to be an overpowering speaker it
will wake you up very softly very gently and it has a great clock and the ability
to dim at night and it does all the right things within the bedroom space so
for me if I'm picking one of these I might choose this if I want the bigger
speaker but in general I'm choosing this because it is kind of tuned towards that
bedroom experience if we move into the bathroom which is usually right off the
bedroom space I'm going to tell you don't put any of these there they all
have this cloth fabric on the back and honestly it's just not the right
environment for that or your microphone so you're going to fill that up with
stuff you don't want to think about within all of these devices but if you
had to put one in there then again I'm going back to this because you won't
feel the financial hit as hard I would actually recommend that what you do is
you go and you get an Amazon echo flex instead if you're looking at Amazon's
voices system heading into a home office or a study I think this becomes two
separate discussions if you're using a lot of video calling that I think you're
heading here but overall this is going to do enough for most people I don't
think you need the real clarity in most video calling as I've talked about
earlier and I also think that the speaker size and the overall size is
just the right size for most home offices they're not huge rooms and
sometimes this could be an overpowering display sitting in that situation as we
head into the kitchen you're deaf only going to want to spend a little bit
more here and go with the bigger displays one of these two definitely I
would again recommend that you get it off the ground in lots of cases they're
number one it's going to sound better and number two it's just going to be off
the ground so you can kind of clean around it and it could get very dirty
otherwise but both of these screen sizes and speaker sizes are the right size for
that space and it's really just coming down to your overall counter space that
you have whether or not you go with this or this now overall this is plenty for
most kitchens that I've been in and I don't think you need to go spend that
extra hundred dollars here moving into the living room I think this is really
going to depend on what you plan to use a device for now echo show devices can
all be paired with a fire TV 4k or a fire TV cube to create up to a two point
one home theater system and if you're doing that then I think you definitely
have to be on this side of the game where you're using one of these two
devices otherwise you know in general I'll tell you that upgrade on this
speaker might be worth it to you just to have that extra level of loudness that
extra level of capability with the echo show second generation now if you're
just going to use it to play content I really again recommend that you head
over here and that's because the two inches here I think will be really
important in most living rooms it's not important everywhere but it is important
in this case because you will be overpowered by other devices other noise
and other screens in those kinds of situations in the gym I'm going right
back to the Amazon echo show second generation this is such a powerful
device and I love the Bluetooth connectivity option and you have that on
all three of these so you can again downgrade but I love the overall power
it works with the noisy gym environment if you have a home gym you can really do
a lot with that speaker there and it is exactly how I use this device in my own
home own smart home of course if you have a
situation that isn't covered today go ahead and
leave that down below now if you'd like further reviews from us at automate your
life if you enjoyed this you learned a lot then number one make sure you join
automate your life by hitting that subscribe button
on-screen otherwise guys go watch some more of our smart home reviews we do
really detailed stuff thanks for watching and of course don't hate
automate