An Echo Show 15 is Amazon’s largest Alexa dazzling display and is designed to act as the family’s electronic noticeboard or command center. It is significantly more significant than the other Echo Show gadgets from Amazon, which recently received a motorized screen and compact desk-ready displays. They are dwarfed by the £239.99 ($249.99/A$399) Echo Show 15, whose enormous 15.6-inch screen resembles a picture frame more than a piece of technology.
Its wall-mountable form, which can install in either a landscape or portrait orientation, adds to the illusion by being intended to be put in a prominent location like the digital version of the pinboards ubiquitous in kitchens of homes in the 1980s. For £30 more, you can get it with a stand if you’d instead not screw 2.2kg of electronics into your wall.
Its two 1.6-inch speakers sound more like the inexpensive Echo Dot than the more powerful Echo Show 10. They are loud & clear for Alexa’s voice or watching videos but just average for music deficient in the bass. At arm’s length, the 1080p touchscreen is clear and brilliant. The top of the device contains volume controls, a microphone, and mute camera buttons. As well as physical privacy shutters for the camera.
What will you see here?
Design
Amazon designed the Echo Show 15 to be wall-mounted, which is pretty simple to install because of its almost picture frame-like appearance. Hold the plastic frame against the wall and fasten it with four screws. Since we connected this onto some drywall as in a kitchen. The operation felt less painful than other prior wall-mounting attempts. When had it here up in a couple of minutes?
That was, of course, the simple solution. If you have the appropriate drill bit, you may drill into a more complex substance, and Amazon even offers wall anchors with the product.
The power cord termination protrudes from the wall, making it impossible to attach it over an outlet without sophisticated DIY abilities. People who desire the cleanest appearance possible without a cord detracting from their pristine aesthetic will find it irritating.
Amazon does offer a separate stand for people who choose not to wall-mount the Amazon Echo Show 15. However, this stand is not included in the box and must be purchased separately for an additional $29.99 / £29.99 (Australian pricing is pending confirmation).
Where, therefore, should it be mounted? It should place at or near eye level and within reach of everybody in the house, according to Amazon. Though we could see it functioning in just about any space, we decided on the kitchen at around eye level. However, picking the ideal group might be challenging. Concealing the cord is difficult if you mount it high on the wall. But if you mount it too low, it might be difficult for people to see you after using video chat.
Additional widgets
It functions mainly in the same way as previous Alexa bright screens from Amazon. It responds to queries, sets timers, manages intelligent home appliances, and displays the feed from connected cameras like Ring doorbells. Additionally, it may show off your Facebook or Amazon Photographs photos alone or in conjunction with other media, which looks fantastic.
Unlike its siblings, the Show 15 can display numerous widgets on its home screen in addition to the standard time, information, and photo displays. These are just a few widgets: the weather, calendars, shared to-do lists, Amazon Music controls, recipe suggestions, and smart home controls.
The idea is fantastic, but the widgets lack variation in their size, shape, and placement and operate a little slowly. There should be more of them, and you’d want to be able to move the most extensive calendar widget from the middle of the screen to the bottom instead. I’d also like a larger intelligent home control widget. Although it’s a fantastic beginning, they still need work to become a standout feature.
Floating picture-in-picture windows that broadcast video feeds via security cameras allow you to observe who is at the door while performing another task, like following a recipe.
Amazon Echo Show 15: Features
Another benefit of having it at that point is that the integrated 5MP camera will be able to recognize you when you interact with the device, allowing you to receive customized content.
Though this may theoretically vary from person to person, for us, that content included jokes, jokes about the weather, and cooking recipes right out of the box. But you can also add those widgets we previously discussed if you want to liven up your home screen.
There are already more than a dozen options available, and we ultimately installed pretty much every single one of them. Currently, there is no option to resize them. So only four or five of them will become visible on the main screen while the rest will conceal. Is that terrible news?
But they pleasantly delight with the widget variety. While they didn’t require the notes part because it was single, it’s simple to understand how a family of four with varying schedules may find it helpful. Speaking of plans, having an integrated calendar that was constantly visible made it simple to see when the next meeting was, and the shopping list served as a reminder of what you needed to buy when we made our next trip to the store.
Visual ID and cameras
They spoke of the front-facing camera on the Echo Show 15. The primary purpose is to power Alexa Calling, allowing you to make video calls within your house and to other Alexa users. The 13-megapixel camera on the Echo Show 8 has auto-framing to put you in the center of the video conversation. But the camera on the Echo Show 15 is static and lacks that capability.
However, the camera’s quality isn’t all that spectacular. But on a device of this nature, they’re not sure it matters as it works just fine for those casual conversations.
Visual ID
But there’s a brand-new function called Visual ID. In essence, this is the same as Voice ID, a feature of Alexa that enables it to detect your voice and provide information specific to you—in comparison, offering anything different to certain other users.
For the Echo Show to effectively log you in and display personalized content for you. When you are in front of it, Visual ID enables you to register your face (which is saved on the Echo Show, not even on Amazon’s servers, so don’t be concerned about the privacy risk there).
Although that system appears to operate effectively, it is not currently beneficial. It performs a repetitive task when it logs us in by displaying. Like the calendar, recently played music, and weather widgets duplicate the other devices we already see on the screen. To prevent Visual ID from activating, we started closing the camera cover.
You would need to have a different set of data for each registered user. Such as other calendars, for it to be helpful. This would work for a power couple with separate active calendars that Alexa can access. But for a family in which the Echo Show 15 is positioned as the core of the home. It now seems to make little to no sense.
Performances in both audio and visual media
The performance of the Echo Show 15 has significantly declined. However, the new user interface feels considerably better than the rest of the Echo Show lineup.
To begin with, two 1.6″ full-range drivers output all of the device’s audio out the side of the display. This is a considerable reduction from the three 1.0″ woofers and two 1.0″ tweeters featured on the Amazon Echo Show 10. It is the main reason why Show 15 cannot produce any audible bass response.
This is not to say that Echo Show 15 has poor audio reproduction and that it can’t be loud. Neither of these statements is accurate. Instead, the Echo Show 15 has a distinct midrange emphasis and enriches speech for podcast and daily news briefing listening very well. While testing, it filled our kitchen with sound. But the sound coming from the display was never as powerful as the sound from the nearby portable Bluetooth speaker.
The 15.6-inch display of the Echo Show 15 follows a similar pattern. At this size, it doesn’t require a resolution higher than 1920 x 1080. But it lacks many essential components that would make tv shows And movies stand out. One of them is support for HDR, which would improve contrast and color saturation. When you see a screen at an angle without that and without any panel technology to increase the field of vision, the color quickly loses its saturation.
Does it make sense to buy the Amazon Echo Show 15?
Amazon Echo Show 15 prices £269.98 ($279.98/A$448,95) without a stand or £239.99 ($249.99/A$399). The frame costs £29.99 when purchased separately.
While Google’s Nest Hub Max costs £219 as well as the Nest Hub costs £89.99, the Echo Show 5 costs £44.99, with Echo Show 8 costs £119.99, and the Echo Show 10 costs £239.99.
Conclusion
The Echo Show 15 has much potential to develop into a fantastic, brilliant display.
With its large 15.6-inch screen, picture-frame surround, and wall-mounting or stand choices, it is unlike anything else on the market. Even with only a few little widgets & multitasking choices, Amazon has yet to capitalize on its size fully. As a home’s central digital hub, it seems like it could accomplish much more.
On Amazon’s smaller monitors, Alexa replies swiftly and performs her best. Face recognition does an excellent job of displaying personalized material without requiring you to engage with it directly.
The Echo Show 15 is the vast Alexa bright display you need for your kitchen. Yet it costs the same as Amazon’s smaller ten motorized models. However, it hasn’t fully achieved the change it promised.
