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Amazon has made the Echo Hub available for purchase at a price of $180. Echo Hub gives Alexa an earned spot in the smart home market. A control panel for easy access to your smart devices, without ads or unnecessary waste.
Smart Display can be slow and buggy, especially when loading multiple camera views. Currently, only the Ring camera can be used in snapshot view, but this will change in the future.
Many smart home enthusiasts, myself included, are tired of juggling dozens of apps on our phones to control the smart devices in our home. The release of Matter has alleviated this hassle, but the new smart home connectivity standard is not yet well-supported to overcome the challenge.
As a result, many of us are looking for smart displays that give us quick access to control our devices. Some tech-savvy people repurpose old wall-mounted tablets to use as smart home control centers, but there are also devices like Echo Show and Google that work as smart home controllers right out of the box. Some people choose smart displays like the Nest Hub. , among others.
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However, these devices always have drawbacks. Amazon's latest Echo Hub hopes to fill a gap in the smart home controller market by becoming something these devices aren't: just smart home controllers.
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Echo Hub doesn't have any extra features. There are no spatial audio speakers connected to the base, no ultra-high resolution for streaming, and no ads to display while in standby mode. It has no main purpose other than being a smart home hub and controller.
Testing the Echo Hub over the past week has been a refreshing experience for my smart home. Its navigation is divided into categories and widgets. At first glance, the Echo Hub shows widgets taking up about two-thirds of the screen, with Routines and Rooms on the left side of the screen and Device Categories at the bottom. The widget can be customized and you can add more widgets downloaded from the widget store.
Echo Hub may experience a slight lag when retrieving security camera feeds.
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The 8-inch touchscreen display is wall-mountable, which was my preference since I've always wanted to repurpose the tablet as a wall-mounted smart panel or prop it up on a flat surface using a separately purchased tabletop stand. .
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Echo Hub is not only a smart home control panel with Alexa voice assistant, but as the name suggests, it also works to connect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Matter, Thread, and Sidewalk smart devices.
Echo Hub makes it easy to control all your Alexa-enabled lights.
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But why make an Echo Hub if Amazon already has the Echo Show? The Amazon Alexa smart home network is one of the largest and most intuitive smart home automation systems available. It is becoming. This system has the most compatible devices and supports 100 million devices.
The Alexa app makes it easy to connect and add new devices to your smart home, giving you the ability to control devices from different manufacturers in one place with little effort on your part. When a smart home device says “powered by Alexa,” you can trust that the technology is easy to set up and control with the Alexa app, your voice assistant, and now the Echo Hub.
Related article: Amazon's Echo Show 5 turned me into a smart display believer
I currently have three Echo Shows and four other Echo speakers, so I have a lot of Alexa in my house. As an Apple HomeKit home, I got an Echo speaker to see how Alexa fares against Siri. I then used the Echo Show in my kitchen to listen to music, watch the news, and control my smart home devices while preparing dinner, but the display provided better visuals for my calendar and smart home. Partly because I thought it would improve, but it didn't. . I love that the Echo Hub does exactly what it promises. It provides a clear view of your smart home and an easy way to control it.
Echo Hub camera view.
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I've never been silent about the Echo Show's shortcomings, especially as someone who uses this technology every day. I can't control what I see while on standby, Alexa can only understand me about 80% of the time, the hardware itself is slow and laggy, and apps like YouTube require a browser. I hate that it's so hard to use. Navigate by voice and smart home controls are a secondary feature.
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I hate to admit that I reach for Alexa more often than the Apple Home app because it can handle a variety of devices, maintain reliable connections, and make routines easy to use. Echo Hub puts all that convenience on your wall and within reach. Easily run routines from the hub, arm or disarm your Ring alarm system, check security cameras, adjust the downstairs thermostat, or turn lights on or off on your way upstairs at night. can.
Echo Hub isn't a smart speaker, but Alexa responds on-device, so you can mute it or adjust the volume so you don't hear the wake word.
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Echo Hub isn't a speaker, so during setup you can choose which Echo devices in your home will play music when you ask Alexa on Echo Hub to play something. This is another point of differentiation between the Echo Hub and other Echo devices. This approach means you don't need to get an Echo Hub instead of an Echo speaker if you want to play music, especially if you need smart speakers around the house.
Like many smart home users, I'm reluctant to give in completely to Alexa or Amazon due to privacy and security concerns, especially considering the data isn't processed locally. Companies can always claim to prioritize consumer privacy, but when it comes to personal information, they can only be taken at face value.