Amazon’s expanding the smart screen options on its Echo Show again, this time in a bigger way. With a 15-inch 1080p HD display, the new $249.99 Echo Show 15 is the company’s largest smart display to date. The Echo Show 15 is also unlike earlier Echo models in that it is flat and can be hung on the wall. Instead of having a touchscreen and a loudspeaker.
Amazon’s smart display is designed to act as a hub for families to check their calendars, to-do lists, sticky note reminders, and shopping lists in the future. It sees it in places like the living room, a frequently used corridor, and, of course, the kitchen. It can do all of the functions of earlier Echo Show smart displays. They include playing music, offering weather predictions, streaming video, controlling smart home devices, and whatever else Alexa can do.
The Show 15, on the other hand, makes better use of its larger screen by displaying more useful, permanently placed widgets with the usual news, third-party skill advertising, and so on. You may use these widgets to show a calendar, to-do list, food ideas, preferred smart home controls, or anything else you choose. Amazon is working on a couple of these widgets. It has also released an API for developers to utilize to incorporate them into Alexa Skills.
You won’t be able to cover the full display with your selected items, for example, if you want to construct a smart home dashboard. The spinning home material seen on previous Echo Show displays occupies half of the screen, while widgets occupy the other.
THE SHOW 15 HAS THE SAME DESIGN AS SAMSUNG’S FRAME TV.
The Show 15 is meant to seem like a picture frame, and it can also be used as a full-screen photo viewer. There’s a strong resemblance to Samsung’s Frame TV, another screen designed to resemble a picture frame, but on a smaller scale. The Show 15 features a black frame with a white bezel enclosing the display at launch – when I inquired, the company said it would not promise to deliver alternative designs in the future.
The front-facing camera on the Echo Show 15 is 5-megapixels and may be utilized for video calling. However, it can also recognize who is in front of the Echo Show 15. Then display customized material for them, like a welcome, reminders, calendar events, special notes, or other information.
When it detects that a youngster is using it, it may also limit the material available to age-appropriate stuff. The Show 15’s custom-designed AZ2 neural edge processor, a follow-up to the AZ1 that debuted in last year’s Echo devices, is said to enable the new Visual ID feature.
THE FACIAL RECOGNITION OF THE DEVICE HAPPENS LOCALLY ON AMAZON’S.
All of the Visual ID processing, according to Amazon, takes place locally. The identifying information is kept on the Echo Show 15 device rather than on the cloud. Because the facial profiles aren’t shared between devices, you’d have to set them up for each Echo Show 15 separately if you had more than one. Furthermore, turning off the camera or using the built-in shutter to block it will fully deactivate the feature.
The Echo Show 15 is the most significant change to the form factor of a smart display. Since it first appeared on the market a few years ago. It also neatly handles several issues that have arisen with them. Such as the fact that they take up frequently valuable counter space and seem blatantly gadget-y. The Show 15’s technology is primarily hidden beneath an aesthetically neutral design. It may be used in a variety of houses.
However, whether the Echo Show 15 will be more useful than previous Echo smart screens remains to be seen. Amazon’s new widget system might be useful, but I’m doubtful that third parties would use it in a significant way.
The Echo Show 15 will almost certainly suffer from the same flaws as previous Echo Show displays. Recipes are frequently used as a selling point for smart displays. But only if the recipe you seek is in the databases of Amazon’s partners.
We’ll have to wait for final judgment. Until we’ve had a chance to put the Echo Show 15 through its paces. Still, it’s a fascinating device. We’re interested to see how it’ll integrate into a real house when it comes later this year.
