Echo Show 5 3rd gen Review

To date, I haven’t been too much into the smart home life. I have smart devices, but things like the voice assistants never appealed to me. Then I fell in love with my Ring doorbells, and knowing they were owned by Amazon made all of this seem more appealing. So given the chance to give the Echo Show 5 a spin as a smart home hub, I was keen to see if I wanted to have an Alexa home. Turns out, I do.

The 5th Echo show? Or the 3rd one?

If you are getting into this for the first time, the numbering scheme can throw you off a bit. It’s far less intimidating than it seems. The number at the end is the type of Echo Show, so for example, the Echo Show 15 is a bigger screen that is designed to be wall mounted, whereas the Echo Show 10 is built on a swivel stand that is designed to move around so you can see it at any angle. 

The Echo Show 5 is a much smaller device, 5 inches to be specific, with a solid bulky base. This makes it a nice device to sit on your desk under your monitor or on your nightstand as a clock. This is the 3rd generation of this style of show, hence the Echo Show 5 3rd gen.

So what does the Echo show do?

You may be thinking that the Echo show seems like an expensive clock on your nightstand. If this is what you are planning to use it for, then yeah, it’s a damn expensive clock. But there is some awesomeness under the hood here.

Once you connect the device to your Amazon account, you can get it to do heaps. With a quick voice command, you can get it to show you the feed from your Ring Video Doorbell. “Alexa, show me the front door,” and boom, I can see who is hanging out at my front door. That’s one of the handiest features as you sit at your desk and want to be nosy without having to walk over to the window. But it doesn’t stop there. If you link up your preferred music service, you can ask Alexa to play you some music from it, or link your streaming services and ask Alexa to play a movie, and it will show it on that nice 5.5-inch screen.

But it doesn’t end there. If you have an Alexa-enabled speaker, you can tell Alexa to play music on that speaker from your Echo Show, and like that, the kids are entertained and out of your hair. That may be the difference between a 6 AM wakeup and a sweet, sweet 6:15 AM sleep in. Trust me, that 15 minutes makes a difference.

So what is new in the Echo Show 5 3rd gen?

Obviously, using one for the first time, I don’t have an old device to compare it to. The second Generation had Matter support, so that is also here. The device looks more or less the same as well. But under the hood, it has been given a decent boost, promising 20% faster performance and an improved mic setup. These things are both super important to the functionality of the Echo Show 5. 

What else can the Echo Show 5 3rd gen do?

It’s bonkers how many things you can do here. You can ask Alexa to show you some news or show you other stuff like that. It’s almost like the device was designed to show you stuff, hence the name. But it doesn’t stop there. There is an inbuilt camera so you can video call people from it, and a slider on the top so you can disable the camera if that makes you uncomfortable.

When it’s on the idle screen, you can set the images that appear so you can have it sitting idly showing the time and flashing across your family photos. That makes a dang smart photo frame!

If Alexa can do it, it’s likely that the Echo Show 5 can do it. It’s bonkers.

There has to be some drawbacks, right?

It is a $190 device, so it isn’t going to be perfect. The camera in it is far from the next, but it’s easily good enough in a pinch. Given the option of using your phone or a lappy webcam, they will provide a better option for video. But if you are working away in the kitchen and trying to have a video chat with your mum, then it’s easily good enough. And thanks to the angle it sits at, it’s much easier than trying to balance your phone at an angle where she can see you.

The speaker, which is solid, isn’t the best when it gets loud. But again, it’s a device that does a lot of things and only costs $190. It won’t be your main TV or speaker, because you should get dedicated devices for that if they are important to you. But the Echo Show 5 3rd gen does achievable jobs of this. Playing music in the background or watching a YouTube video as you doze off in bed, will easily do.

The other thing is that unlike most devices these days, it doesn’t have a battery. So placement is limited to where you have power ports, and it’s not designed to be moved around a lot. I mean, you can, and it boots up fast enough, but it’s more about getting it in an optimal place like your desk or your bedside table and leaving it there.

The other minor annoyance is that despite having a touch screen, what you can do with it is limited. You can do stuff like play with settings and whatnot, but I was expecting to be able to open apps like Spotify from the touch screen. Instead, this is all voice commands. Not a major, but an adjustment if you haven’t lived your life by voice assistant to date.

There are also a few features that aren’t available in NZ yet. Like when I asked it to play music int he kids mode, it told me it wasn’t available in my region. I didn’t hit this much in my testing, and hope that the few things it couldn’t do, will be available soon.

Should you get an Echo Show 5 3rd gen?

I’m not gonna lie, I was a touch skeptical about some of these smart devices. But as Matter is becoming much more widespread, and with the number of great smart devices like Ring doorbells, the Echo Show 5 3rd gen has become an incredibly useful tool in my household. 

Everything from controlling my cameras to controlling my speaker to getting Alexa to fart for the kids makes this a useful tool in my house. 

8 Hell Yeah!

For the price, this is a really awesome way to start or enhance your smart home!