Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsgood sound quality but useful functions don't work well
Reviewed in Canada on December 5, 2023
Whatever is near useless to me works well, lots of bloatware but I knew this before buying.
Problem is the 3 things I need it to do it doesn't do well.
1) display frontdoor camera when motion at camera detected (with a doorbell press- it does display on echo show) however with motion detected it only gives an audio alert. The work around of a routine to do this does not work. Display doesn't wake from monitor off mode. It does work with spoken command though- so this is very strange.
2) photos wallpaper- took forever to set up properly (and I'm fairly tech savy), only 10photos possible, also device prefers energy save modes so it stops displaying photos regularly. Device was not designed as a photo album viewer priority.
3) show all cameras- with a spoken command it works, if you want a screen to monitor all cameras this device nor any I'm aware of will do that for ring. Camera display also time out after 10mins.
[Sidenote: Music on echo show 5 sucks, there's barely any mid range, bass is boomy and exaggerated, treble is non existent (adjusting treble on tone controls makes no difference because the speaker can't reporduce this range). Oh and echo show 5 speaker is MONO, there's only 1 speaker.]
Echo show 8 sound quality is tons better and is stereo. Other functions 5 and 8 are same- with the abundance of poor user interface and issues.
I have all "contents" except weather turned off. Note: do not use weather widget if your "weather" in "home contents" are turned on as this is redundant, oversight?
Alexa commands are fairly reliable even when whispering so this is impressive. Music is free (as I have Prime) so this is convenient but not the reason for purchasing these units.
Touchscreen is fairly responsive but nothing like a modern phone, maybe a mediocre android phone from 5yrs ago.
Even though I purchased both units on sale I feel it's still not worth the cost as there's too many issues. I may return both units and hope they get refinements in future (and not more ads like Amazon attempted to do with 2023 Echo Show 8 (that's not available in Canada).
This product was designed with greed in mind, doesn't benefit the consumer much. If you like to make more purchased through amazon using Alexa, or watch TV or play games it's just fine. I can't only really see myself using these if I were sick in bed (no tv in bedroom) and wanted a larger screen (vs echo show 8) than my iphone, I wouldn't watch a movie using the show 5 as my phone has a better display.