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Smart Displays

Echo Show 15: A Month In, Here Is What It Is Really For

2023 · From the Tech with Asher channel · Watch below or read on

When I bought the Echo Show 15 a month ago, I was convinced I was buying a large screen and not much else. The price certainly said premium: this is the expensive end of the smart display shelf. A month of daily use later, I understand what this device actually is, and it is not primarily a screen at all.

It is a family command center

The 15 inch, full HD panel holds widgets the way a phone home screen does, and that turns out to be the whole point. Your calendar, Google, iOS, whichever you use, syncs onto the wall where the entire household actually sees it. Wake up, glance, and the day is laid out. Then the voice layer makes it frictionless. I tested the full chain out loud: add a sticky note to pick up milk, it appears on screen. Add it to the calendar for 7 PM, done, displayed. Add it to my to-do list, done. One sentence each, no phone, no app, visible to everyone who walks past.

It moonlights as a television

Fire TV is built in, controllable by remote or the Fire TV phone app, and the speakers behind the rear grille are genuinely strong; my first-night Netflix test surprised me. Rotate the whole unit and the screen re-orients itself automatically, portrait or landscape, which is a small delight.

Practical realities before you mount it

• It hangs on an included metal bracket, and I even geeked out and put mine on a spare desk stand for a while, which worked fine.
• It is thicker than a picture frame, about a microwave-door of depth, so it stands off the wall a bit.
• The camera is 5 megapixels, modest, but it takes a selfie on request and does the job.
• Camera block, volume, and do-not-disturb controls sit on the edge, and the build quality feels genuinely solid in hand.

Where it ended up, and for whom

My wife called the placement instantly: the kitchen, next to the stove, where recipes, the calendar, and the shopping list all live anyway. That is my verdict too. If you want a gadget, this is an expensive one. If you want the family's shared brain on the busiest wall of the house, schedules, lists, reminders, recipes, a movie while cooking, then at the right price the Echo Show 15 is exactly that, and the widget gallery keeps growing.