Amazon Echo Show 15 review: Alexa on the big screen

When getting a display of any type, the first thing to consider is size. And unless the display will be moving around, chances are that the bigger it is, the better your experience will be. TV manufacturers have gone big, smartphones (to my chagrin) insist on doing so, and now it's time for a newer category, smart displays, to step onto the big screen.

The Amazon Echo Show 15 isn't just the biggest Echo package yet, it has the biggest screen you can easily find in a smart display of any brand. The 15.6-inch display is meant to be anchored and serve as a central organization hub for your household. Boasting Alexa-powered widgets like shared calendars, shopping lists, to-do lists, and the abilities to call household members and manage your other smart devices, there's a lot of utility to take advantage of.

Navigating the Echo Show 15's content sometimes feels clunky, and some features are hard to discover, despite Amazon's efforts to stuff the UI with tips. Different family member profiles can be activated via facial recognition, but the transition isn't always smooth. You'll have to train your family to use the Echo Show 15 to make it really worthwhile. But if you're going down the path of smart displays, the Echo Show 15 comes with a bigger screen and bigger possibilities than the competition.

The bigger, prettier smart display

The Echo Show 15 is about the biggest smart display you can find. The 1920 x 1080 screen measures 15.6 inches diagonally. That tops the 10.1-inch Echo Show 10. The extra size has obvious benefits, like easier navigability, the ability to view more on-screen at once and making the Picture Frame feature more impactful. But it doesn't come with a larger price. As of writing, the Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 10 are the same price

Meanwhile, the largest Facebook Portal, the $300 Portal+, is only 14 inches, Google's Nest Hub Max is 10 inches, and Lenovo has the 10.1-inch Smart Display 10".

The Portal+, however, has a sharper, 2160 x 1440 resolution. That all adds up to greater pixel density for Facebook's display (185.43 pixels per inch) over the Echo Show 15 (141.2 ppi). Naturally, the Echo Show 15 also loses the ppi contest over smaller screens, like the Nest Hub Max (1280 x 800 for 150.94 ppi). A sharp display is important, considering the Echo Show 15 offers access to streaming services, like Netflix and Hulu. Given that you're primarily going to touch and read things off of it, more screen real estate is better.

You can set the Echo Show 15 to adjust brightness based on how much light is in the room. That's not an uncommon feature. In fact, the Portal+ can adjust both brightness and color in this way. I didn't find the feature that useful though because the Echo Show 15 wouldn't drop past 50 percent brightness, even in a virtually pitch-black room.

Despite being a pretty hefty piece of hardware, the Echo Show 15 blended into my home's aesthetic easily. Unlike other smart displays, it doesn't look like tablet glued to a wireless speaker. A black frame contrasts the display's thick, but classy-looking, white border, allowing the device to play the roles of a picture frame, painting, or bulletin board with ease. The design made me easily fall in love with the Photo Frame feature, which displays your photos or a carousel of themed images and/or paintings.

In addition to this seasonal theme, the Photo Frame mode can carousel nature, art, or your own photos.

Credit: Scharon Harding

And by combining pleasant images with Alexa's Nature Sounds skill, which plays peaceful noises through the display's speakers, the Echo Show 15 added an unexpected calming ambience to its room.

Uniquely, the Echo Show 15 can sit or be mounted vertically or horizontally. Not everyone has counter space to dedicate to a smart display, and mounting it makes using facial recognition easier, as it requires the camera to see the user at eye level. This makes finding the perfect mounting position difficult (unless your family is all the same height). Additionally, the Echo Show 15's 5-foot cord may leave you in need of an extension cord.

The back of the Echo Show 15.

Credit: Scharon Harding

If you don't think the Echo Show 15 is worth the holes in your wall, you can use a stand instead, but you'll have to pay $30 extra.

Stealthier speakers

One of the reasons the Echo Show 15 is so attractive, as well as mountable, is its more discrete design. The Echo Show 10 looks like a tablet mounted on an Echo Dot, and the Echo Show 8 has a 3.9-inch-thick hump to accommodate its speakers. But when mounted to wall or in Photo Frame mode, the Echo Show 15 could easily pass for a picture frame. That look is largely enabled by stealthy speakers using an angled-in design to hide behind the display.

Profile view of the Echo Show 15 on a stand.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Once mounted or sitting on a stand, you can't see the Echo Show 15's speakers, making it much easier for the Echo Show 15 to pretend it's a silent wallflower.

That subtle design comes at a cost though. The Echo Show 15 uses a pair of 1.6-inch tweeters, which are generally geared toward higher frequencies. The Echo Show 10, however, has a pair of 1.6-inch tweeters, plus a 3-inch woofer. Even the Echo Show 8 has a more impressive specs sheet, which boasts two 2-inch tweeters. Outside of the Echo brand, Facebook's Portal+ offers two 5 W speakers and a 20 W woofer. And the Nest Hub Max carries two 0.71-inch 10 W tweeters, as well as a 2.95-inch, 30 W woofer.

From left to right: Camera shutter toggle, mute button, volume up, and volume down.

Credit: Scharon Harding

But the Echo Show 15 can still fill a room with sound. I could hear the Echo Show 15's speakers from across my long apartment. I couldn't necessarily hear what Alexa was saying from that distance but could hear enough of it to know it was speaking. Sounds, like the aforementioned ambient noises from Nature Sounds, and even music were impressively loud and clear when I was in the same room as the device, in which case, I usually preferred the speakers at about 50-60 percent volume or less.

Widgets: what can the Echo Show 15 do?

It looks pretty, but can the Echo Show 15 do anything that's actually useful? It prides itself greatly on its 15 widgets. You pick the ones that show up on the Home screen alongside Home Content, a carousel of various, and sometimes, random information. It might show you content updates from Alexa skills you have before giving you the weather and time, then going to "top headlines from trusted sources," as Amazon put it, and then a shortcut to a WikiHow on peeling a hardboiled egg. Home Content also shows you user-specific notifications, such as when another one of the device's users has sent you a Sticky Note.

Home Content is on the left. The right side shows the Calendar & Reminders, Smart Home Favorites, Sticky Notes, and Weather widgets.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Frustratingly, you can't expand the Home Content portion so that it spreads across the whole screen. Your only option is to tap on it to open the currently displayed feature (or news video, recipe et cetera) completely. This prevented me from getting a better look at some Home Content, like an interesting image or headline, before the Echo Show 15 moved on to the next item.

Similarly, when scrolling through widgets, the widgets section takes up most of the screen, but there's always a sliver of Home Content visible, but too small to be helpful, on the side.

You can select up to 10 widgets for the Echo Show 15's Home screen.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Setting up the Echo Show 15's widgets in the order you want is easy enough, except for the machine timing out and sending you back to the Home menu after just 30 seconds. Whether perusing the list of widgets available or contemplating what else you need to add to your Shopping List widget, you only have half a minute of inactivity before you have to start all over again.

This drop-down menu appears when you swipe down from the top edge.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Back to the widgets. They're really the core of the Echo Show 15, and they are:

• Alexa Suggestions
• Calendar & Reminders
• Commute
• Cookpad Recipe of the Day
• Favorite Photos
• Maps, which doesn't provide directions but tracks things like Amazon devices and Tile and Samsung Galaxy SmartTag trackers
• Music and Audio, where you can play the Amazon Music streaming service for free
• Reorder Suggestions, where Amazon tries to get you to spend more money by predicting what's out of stock,
• Shopping List, where you add said items
• Smart Home Favorites, for managing your other smart home devices
• Sticky Notes
• To-Do List
• Weather
• What to Eat, suggests restaurants and recipes with ingredients you can tap to add to Shopping List
• Your Deliveries, for tracking all those Amazon orders made with Reorder Suggestions.

There's a tinge of consumerism here that's feels tacky but it is an Amazon product, after all. It's also worth noting that the arrangement of the widgets carries across profiles. You can't set your Home page to look different from your son's, for example.

Now, let's take a deeper look at some of the more interesting widgets on the Echo Show 15.

Calendar & Reminders

Calendar & Reminders widget expanded.

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This is perhaps the most obvious use for the Echo Show 15. The widget has small and large options for the Home screen, where it can display a monthly calendar, along with a list of scheduled events. This lets you manage the calendar for everyone in the household and take quick glances at the day or week's events. And sometimes it's just plain nice to have a calendar in places where the Echo Show 15 is designed to live, like in the kitchen or home office.

The widget isn't very advanced, but offers a critical feature to make it worth managing. A virtual calendar that everyone in the family can add to without lifting a finger is a product many chaotic family would appreciate on its own. The trick is, of course, that your family members or you yourself have to remember to actually put the events into the device either by voice, touch, or the Alexa app.

Alexa can also direct reminders at a specific household member. Reminders go off no matter who (or if no one) is logged in. You can also app to add them via a device with the Alexa app, like a smartphone. Sometimes, however, Reminders got wonky by only allowing me to delete, rather than edit, a user's name.

Further helping you to stay on top of the things, the Echo Show 15 also has a simple, but effective, To-Do list feature. When the widget is expanded, it shows a timestamp of when each item was added, which I found to serve as passive aggressive nudge for the procrastinators in the family.

Alexa 101: the Suggestions widget and more

One of the biggest obstacles smart home products still face is proving their ongoing utility. That's why I like the Alexa Suggestions widget. All it does is suggest a new thing to try tell Alexa to do. But it helps fight that dreaded utterance, "I never know what to use this thing for." You know, that phrase that comes right before a shiny new piece of tech gets unplugged and condemned to basement purgatory.

There are numerous other ways Amazon tries to ensure you don't get bored with the Echo Show 15. Telling them apart is actually confusing. Besides the Alexa Suggestions widget, the Home screen's Home Content section (to the left of the widgets) often shows new or "trending" Alexa skills. The display's drop-down menu, which appears when you swipe down from the screen's top edge, also has a Discovery section.

The Echo Show 15 menu's Discovery section.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Information from the Discovery section can be incorporated into the Home Content's carousel too. That carousel can also show previews of Top Skills, like Akinator, and "popular questions being asked on Alexa."

The point is, the Echo Show 15 can constantly show you different things to do with it. Although, a less randomized way of delivering that information would help me incorporate them into my family's routine more naturally.

Shopping List

Shopping List widget expanded.

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You can add items to the Echo Show 15's Shopping List by talking to or tapping the device. The list is also conveniently accessible on-the-go through the Alexa app. Again, when I spent more than 30 seconds considering what I wanted to add to the list, the screen would return to the home page, derailing my train of thought. I could still quickly tell Alexa what I needed and get the item on my Shopping list without having to open the widget again. But if I were reading the list in order to determine what else I needed, I had limited time.

Out of the box, Shopping List has a Popular List Items list on the right, including items like chicken, olive oil, paper towels, and eggs. Additionally, it keeps track of when an item was added, which I didn't find helpful. Overall, it seems like the app could be improved down the line. For one, the the timestamp can be dropped for a cleaner look. And the Popular List Items could maybe list Your Favorite Items instead.

Smart home control

The Echo Show 15 is great for those who already have smart home devices throughout the home, since one of its best use cases is as a central hub for everyone to see and control those products. For example, I had the Smart Home Favorites widget provide a live feed of my external smart home camera at all times, making the Echo Show 15 feel like the center of a serious home security center. If something looked fishy, I could enlarge the video and keep it on-screen as I used other features. I could also ask Alexa to show me a view of any of my smart home cameras or use the widget to get a quick overview of which smart plugs are on and how bright the smart lights are. And Alexa would notify me when my smart home device had a message, such as a notification that there's motion in my garden.

The pull-down menu on the Echo Show 15 also has a Smart Home section, where you get a larger look at your smart devices and groupings, like Living Room for all smart home devices in the family room.

Sticky Notes

The Sticky Notes widget is just like adding a Post-it to a bulletin board, except you can write it out with your voice and use emojis. Since the Echo Show 15 doesn't have different home screens for different profiles, everyone family member will see the same sticky notes. But you can send a note a specific family member if they have set up facial recognition. Then, the Echo Show 15 will only display the note it when it recognizes the designated recipient's face in front of its camera.

The Home Content section on the left shows a notification that the current user has three new notes from another user.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Note (pun not intended) that you can have multiple sticky notes posted onto your home screen. And you can send notes to the Echo Show 15 via the Alexa app too.

TV and radio

At this point, if there isn't enough for you to do on the Echo show 15 to warrant its $250 MSRP, it's probably not for you. But if you're on the fence, this may tip you over. The Echo Show 15 is also smart TV, as you can stream 1080p video from Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu on it. That may not be obvious after first setting up the Echo Show 15, since there are no dedicated widgets, but you can bring the streaming services up by asking Alexa.

You can use the Echo to access free content too. I was also able to watch ABC News and CBS News and listen to NPR, Bloomberg, and Fox News radio stations without providing any sort of logins.

With the added functionality of pseudo-TV and radio, the Echo Show 15 inches closer to earning a space on your kitchen counter or living room wall.

Amazon's AZ2 processor

The Echo Show 15 introduces Amazon's AZ2 neural edge processor, which the smart display uses within an Amlogic Pop1 SoC. The AZ2 builds on the AZ1 found in the current Echo Show 10 by using four cores instead of two (bringing the Amolgic Pop1's core count to eight total) and 22 times as many TOPS (trillions of operations per second). What does that mean for you? The smart display is generally supposed to handle speech and facial recognition much faster.

Both the AZ2 and AZ1 can process speech recognition and computer vision workloads (for facial recognition) on the hardware, rather than in the cloud. This reduces latency and privacy concerns to a degree.

Facial recognition

Visual ID, Amazon's term for Echo facial recognition, debuted on the Echo Show 15, but you can also use it on the Echo Show 10 and 8. The difference is everything should work faster on the Show 15.

If you have members of the family make Visual IDs, the Echo Show 15 will recognize which registered profile member is using it. The smart display and its predecessors all claim to store facial and voice recognition data on the device itself only. You can also go into the Alexa app and obliterate the data, according to Amazon.

It usually took my Echo Show 15 a few seconds to recognize someone's face. Conveniently, the display recognized me with my glasses on even though I made my Visual ID without them. But sometimes I had to move around in order to get myself in the right positioning. This will be even more challenging for you if you have the members of your family have very different heights. A housemate taller than I am, for example, had to stoop down a little for the Echo Show to recognize them.

I also found it easier for the Echo Show 15 to recognize someone if I moved away from the home screen and then came back to it. Although, it was still possible to switch profiles without doing that. Amazon says you can leave the camera on so it's as simple as walking up the device to get started, but having an Amazon camera on at all times will likely creep out members of your household.

Unlocking an Echo Show 15 profile with facial recognition yields a mildly personalized experience. You can't create a new layout for each person, but you can have sticky notes and reminders sent to a specific profile, so that they'll only appear when the Show 15 recognizes them. For profiles designated as belonging to children, logging in via facial recognition also means censored Home Content. Further, the device can recall a specific person's recently played music and preferred news sources. Still, I'd like to see the Echo show 15 get more advanced profiles with more customization options, like color schemes such and widget preferences.

Using the Echo Show 15 to communicate

If you're the type of household that could use a central organization hub, you're probably interested in nagging—er, excuse me—calling them every now and then. The Echo Show 15 gives you a few more routes to do that which may or may not work better than shouting their name down the hall.

The Echo Show 15 can send messages or make calls to another Echo Show or any phone with the Alexa app. You can dial a number if they're in your Alexa contacts; otherwise, you have to connect a mobile service to Alexa. If everyone in your household has the app on their phone, all you have to do is ask the Echo Show 15 to call them to tell them that's dinner ready. You can also make announcements to another Echo device or use your phone to make announcements through the Echo Show 15's speakers.

Amazon says the Echo Show 15 will receive Zoom support in 2022, but currently it supports its own video calling that only works with the Alexa smartphone app. As it stands, the person calling takes up most of the left half of the screen, and you're a tiny rectangle in the upper-right corner. It feels unbalanced and like there's a lot of wasted space.

The video calls also have AR effects if you like that sort of thing, but you and the other person on the call both have to have the feature enabled. Zoom should make features more universally accessible, plus help the Show 15 compete with the Nest Hub Max; Portal+, which also supports WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger; and older Echo Show 10, which supports Zoom, Skype, and the less familiar Amazon Chime.

If you'd rather see your family members than actually talk to them, you can use the Alexa app to log into the Echo Show 15's camera from afar. Yes, I have some privacy concerns about this feature, too. If I could get into the Echo Show 15's camera from my phone, maybe someone I don't know can figure out how to do the same. When someone does log into the Echo 15's camera, a pop-up appears, and you can hit stop. Note that this feature is available outside of Drop In, which I'm about to get into.

Drop In is the slightly less creepy way to access the Echo Show 15's camera. When you Drop In, the entire Echo Show 15 display changes to look like a video call. It's for starting a back-and-forth conversation, not spying.

The actual camera on the Echo Show 15 is 5MP, and there's no auto-framing feature like on the Echo Show 10, which has a 13MP camera, Portal+, which uses a 12MP camera, or the Nest Hub Max with its 6.5MP. The camera was still plenty for doing a familial call though, even with unbalanced and white lighting.