Amazon has released its latest Echo product – the Echo Show 15 – a stylish 15.6-display that can be wall mounted to help you stay organised, stay informed and take complete control of your home’s smart devices.
The Echo Show 15 has a full HD display which can rest on a bench or be mounted on the wall in either portrait or landscape orientation.
Tech Guide has taken a hands-on look at the device which we mounted on our wall and connected to our home wi-fi network.
Echo Show 15 looks like a large digital photo frame with a dark bezel and a white inner bezel which houses the 15.6-inch display.
The device is 40.1cm by 25.2cm and comes with a mounting bracket which works if you mount it portrait (so it looks like a phone screen) or landscape (so it looks like a TV screen).
We mounted our Echo Show 15 on our office wall in landscape and in a position where it can clearly be seen from anywhere in the room.
The device needs a connect to power like all the other Echo products (there’s no battery) and you’ll be able to see the cable running down the wall to the power point.
Users can enjoy all the regular features of the Echo Show devices but now you have a larger canvas to play with.
With that in mind, Echo Show 15 allows you to customise the screen using a new widget gallery so you can see at a glance the information that’s important to you.
These include to do lists, shopping lists, sticky notes, music, calendar, reminders and the weather.
For our review, we included our calendar, a to-do list, a weather widget and a music widget.
and it’s all controllable through Alexa so you can use your voice to add items to a shopping list or a to-do list or to play music or to check the weather forecast.
There’s also a widget for you to display your favourite photos so you can turn Echo Show 15 into a digital photo frame.
One thing Echo Show 15 helps with is organising your household and the members of your household.
With the new Visual ID feature, Alexa can recognise you and then display all your widgets, so the experience is instantly personalised for you.
Visual ID is also rolling out to the Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen) and Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen) through a software update so those customers can register multiple members of the household in the same way you can with the Echo Show 15.
The new Echo Show 15 is designed to be used in a kitchen or shared living/dining area in your home which offers easy access to everyone in your household.
That way it’s easy to check a shared calendar, to-do list, a shopping list and to find recipes for dinner.
Having that larger screen comes in handy because there’s extra room to easily see things like recipe images and ingredients at the same time as your cooking.
You can also see a live feed from your smart doorbells and cameras wall still displaying other important widgets.
One of their favourites was the sticky notes widget which lets you leave a note, just like a real sticky note, for the other members of your household whether it’s a reminder or a simple message.
You can also send a sticky note to a specific adult member of the household that only they will see when they’re recognised in front of the device.
Also on board the Echo Show 15 is a 5-megapixel camera which can be used for video calls via the Alexa app or to drop in on a friend or family member whether you are in the same house or calling from a different location.
And, of course, you can also control other smart devices in your home whether it’s your smart lighting, smart switches or accessing feeds from your cameras or doorbell.
It can become the central control hub of your home.
And the 15.6-inch display can support full HD 1080p video streaming so the device can also become your TV.
Simply ask Alexa to watch movies and TV shows from Prime Video and Netflix and catch up on the news through ABC and Sky News Australia.
Or maybe you want to hear a podcast, play music or listen to your Audible audiobook.
The Echo Show 15 is powered by Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor which has a machine learning inference engine and quad-core scalable architecture that’s significantly more powerful than the previous generation.
The unit can process speech recognition on the device and process computer vision at the same time.
So when the unit recognises an adult household member, the Visual ID and voice processing is done right there on the device, it does not need to connect to the internet to do this.
Amazon recognises privacy is very important to customers and it has clear microphone and camera controls as well as the ability to view and delete your voice recordings and a built-in shutter to physically cover the camera.
The Echo Show 15 is available now and is priced at $399
Customers can also purchase a bundle for $448.95 which comes with a compatible tilt stand to rest Echo Show 15 on a countertop.
