← All guides

Smart Displays

Is the Echo Hub Really Worth the Hype?

2024 · From the Tech with Asher channel · Watch below or read on

When Amazon announced the Echo Hub, they announced Map View alongside it, and in my head the two belonged together. So when I unboxed the Hub I had high expectations. It has a lot going for it, but it fell a little short of what I hoped, and the gap says everything about who smart home panels are really for.

What the Echo Hub does that no Echo Show does

Every Echo Show is a smart display first and a control panel second: to run your devices you dig into a widget or swipe into a dashboard. The Echo Hub flips that. It is a dedicated smart home control surface, with your devices right on the main screen, no digging. If you have invested in smart lights, locks, cameras, and thermostats, this is the wall-mounted mission control that ties them together. That part works, and it is genuinely satisfying.

The problem: device lists are for hobbyists

Here is my honest situation: I have thirty or forty smart devices in my house. As the person who set them all up, I can navigate that list easily. But watch my wife or my kids stand in front of a wall of device names, Lamp 2, Hallway Plug, Bar Light, and the confusion is instant. A list only makes sense to the person who wrote it.

The fix already exists, just not here

Amazon's Map View builds a 3D representation of your actual room. I have it running on an iPad: the screen shows the room I am sitting in, my studio lights appear where they physically are, and I tap the light I am looking at to turn it off. No names, no groups, no guessing. Setting it up with my iPhone was easy, and it is exactly the interface a wall panel needs, because a floor plan is legible to everyone: a spouse, a grandparent, a guest, a renter. The Echo Hub does not have Map View yet, and it does not carry the camera hardware that builds those scans itself, though homes with an iPhone or iPad can create them.

Where this device shines anyway

Even list-driven, the Hub is the best answer today for a household that wants one fixed place to run the home, and I keep imagining it in hotels, Airbnbs, and rental properties, anywhere people walk into an unfamiliar home and need the technology to be obvious. Add Map View someday and it becomes the obvious choice, not just a good one.

The verdict

Buy it if you want your whole smart home at your fingertips on one dedicated panel and you are the kind of person whose device names make sense. Wait if what you really want is the tap-the-room experience, because the software for that exists and this panel deserves it.