Smart speakersare a great way to controlsmart home deviceslike lights, locks, and thermostats, allowing you to operate them hands-free and naturally. Smart displays build on that convenience, allowing you to view visual content, see information at a glance, and interact by touch — none of which is possible with speakers.
Sadly, most smart displays don’t offer an easy experience to control smart home gear, and you often have to go through different menus and taps just to adjust a light’s brightness. With its new Echo Hub, Amazon wants to offer a much more direct approach to interacting with smart home devices while continuing to offer what otherEcho Showdevices do. It’s not much of a media machine, but if controlling Alexa-connected gadgets is your primary smart display need, the Echo Hub is a great option.
Amazon Echo Hub
Amazon’s new Echo Hub is the rare Echo-branded product that doesn’t offer much in the way of a speaker — instead, it has a slim design with a crisp, eight-inch display, so you can easily mount it anywhere. Combined with Amazon’s extensive third-party support, this form factor makes the Echo Hub an ideal smart home control panel.
Price and availability
Get it on Amazon, obviously
The Amazon Echo Hub is available for purchase on Amazon for $180. Unlike other Echo products, there’s only a white color option available. Remember, it only comes with a wall mount, and stands (like the one you’ll see in this review) are sold separately.
Like other Echo products, you should expect a discount for Prime Day and Black Friday, but $180 is a relatively affordable price tag, albeit slightly more than anEcho Show 8.
Specifications
Design, hardware, what’s in the box
Simple design made for wall mounting
The Echo Hub features an 8-inch touchscreen display with relatively thick bezels. Unlike other Echo Show displays, the Hub doesn’t have a camera; instead, it features a proximity sensor above the screen and a microphone array below it. The speakers are located on the top, on each side of the device. There are also three quick access buttons on the right side: one to mute the microphone and two volume buttons.
Like the Echo Show 15, the Echo Hub is designed to be mounted on a wall. I personally find the Echo Hub to be a bit too thick for that use case, measuring about 0.6 inches. It’s notchunky, per se, but it does stick out from the wall more than I’d like, which isn’t aesthetically ideal.
With that in mind, the Hub ships with the appropriate mount, screws, anchors, and mounting template. There’s also a USB-C to USB-A power cable and an adapter, offering different options to conceal the cable. Speaking of which, the Echo Hub features a built-in cable organizer in the back cavity to ensure it’s as discreet as possible when installed on the wall.
If you’d prefer not to drill into your walls, you can place the Echo Hub on a table or a shelf using an optional third-party stand. Most of them integrate nicely with the overall design, with some offering tilting options to optimize the viewing experience. Again, no stand is included — the one pictured here is a separate purchase.
The Echo Hub packs plenty of connectivity options. It connects to your home network and the internet using dual-band Wi-Fi or PoE Ethernet with a USB-C adapter and can be paired with Bluetooth devices like external speakers.
In terms of build quality, the Echo Hub is a bit of a mixed bag. The front bezels feature a glossy white finish, which looks nice and uses premium materials. However, the sides and back use cheaper plastics that don’t feel as pleasing to the touch. This is a bit disappointing, especially when compared to other Amazon devices like the latest Echo Show 8 or Echo Show 15.
Display and audio
Not much of a media machine
The Echo Hub comes with a sharp 8-inch touch screen with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. The latter is bright and responsive, with good brightness and contrast, offering an overall great experience to control devices, but also watch movies and check your cameras and doorbells. The image quality is surprisingly good when watching videos, making the Echo Hub a very versatile device.
Regarding audio quality, the Echo Hub can be loud enough to play music or audio from videos you’re watching. However, it’s definitely not meant to replace an actual speaker, as the sound is pretty hollow and lacks depth and bass. It’s a bit disappointing, as the Echo Show 8 offers much better audio for a lower price, but it also comes with a much bulkier design to house the bigger speaker — and, of course, you can’t mount a Show 8 on your wall.
Software and features
Fit for purpose
The Echo Hub is designed to be a proper smart home hub rather than a smart display you’d use as a modern-day kitchen TV. The Hub can play music and videos, but the screen is relatively small, and the audio quality isn’t the best. However, it’s perfect for checking live camera feeds, adjusting a smart thermostat, or answering the doorbell.
With that in mind, it comes with a completely different user interface compared to Echo Show displays, and I like it a lot more. Indeed, the home screen looks much sleeker, using lighter colors and a simpler user interface based on cards.
The main part of the screen is based on widgets, just like Echo Show devices. This means you can permanently show the weather, your calendar, your to-do list, and more on the home screen. The widgets can be rearranged horizontally according to your needs. The Echo Hub features a new widget type that’s exclusive to it called Smart Home Groups. In essence, it allows you to display all smart home devices linked to a group or room, allowing you to control lights, cameras, thermostats, and more easily.
On the left side of the screen, the device displays different tabs that correspond to the rooms you’ve set in the Alexa app. You can reorganize it according to your preferences and only show the rooms you plan to use. There’s also a bottom dock that lists different types of functions, such as media playback, security, locks, climate control, lights, and plugs. You can rearrange the order based on your preferences.
As I’ve used an Echo Show 15 for a while, I’ve been pleased by how the Echo Hub actually lets me control devices. Indeed, Echo Show screens don’t offer as many options for smart home control, and I’ve either had to open the smart home menu or use voice commands to interact with them, which was very frustrating. The Echo Hub, on the other hand, offers quick access to most smart home devices very intuitively, and organizes them by room or type for easier access.
Another issue it resolves is access to specific device types, such as alarms. Indeed, although Alexa allows you to arm and disarm the system from many Echo displays, it doesn’t let you do so using your device’s screen. This means you have to orally say your PIN to your Echo Show, which I’m not a big fan of. However, the Echo Hub has a dedicated interface to control my Ring security system, with an on-screen keypad and a mode selection menu.
Similarly, I’ve been able to dim the lights by swiping the controller on the screen or adjusting the climate controls using the preset modes I’ve configured. The Echo Hub also offers quick access toAlexa Routinesdirectly from the touchscreen, meaning you may trigger multiple actions directly from your screen.
In addition to controlling smart home devices, I’ve particularly appreciated the ability to glance at the screen to check out the status of different devices. Even though the Echo Hub doubles as a photo frame or a weather clock when it’s on standby, it automatically senses my presence when I approach it and shows its main dashboard. This allows me to see whether the security system is armed and if the door is locked, for example. It’s also a great way to see if I’ve forgotten some lights on or whether the climate controls have been set to a different setting.
The Echo Hub is powered by Fire OS, the same operating system that other Echo Show displays run. As such, it can perform the same actions as an Echo Show 8, such as playing music from your favorite sources, streaming videos, and even letting you use the Silk browser to browse the web.
The lack of a built-in camera prevents the Echo Hub from offering two-way video calls. While video calling isn’t a focus of the Echo Hub, this also means the device can’t recognize users by their faces, and won’t adapt its content automatically like other Echo Show displays can.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Echo Hub comes with support for plenty of smart home protocols, including Zigbee, Matter, Sidewalk, and Thread. This means that in addition to controlling smart home devices, it acts as a hub (hence the name) and centralizes the connectivity across plenty of devices without purchasing additional hubs or bridges, such as the Hue Bridge if you have Philips Hue lights.
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Competition
Amazon’s more or less alone in this space
The Echo Hub is a smart display, but offers a different approach and interface than other Echo Show devices. That said, it competes directly with the Amazon Echo Show 8, which costs about $150 and has much better audio and a built-in camera.
Depending on whether you want a wall-mounted display that primarily acts as a hub to control your smart home devices, or a kitchen display that you occasionally use to turn on some lights, but mainly serves for video calls and to listen to music, you’d favor one over the other. If you have the budget, you can absolutely have both in your house since the Echo Hub’s interface is great for placing it in the entrance or the hallway.
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If you’re not an Alexa fan and prefer Google Assistant, theNest Hubis a smart display that costs $100. It has similar features and great audio, but it can’t be mounted on the wall and requires a few more taps to control smart home devices. Alternatively, the $500 Pixel Tablet combines many of these features with those of a full-featured tablet and can be docked to mimic a regular smart display.
There are home control panels similar to the Vivint Smart Hub, which allow you to control your climate, locks, cameras, and security system from a single screen. But options like that are more complex, typically requiring professional installation, and the Vivint hub is made to work with Vivint’s other gear. The Echo Hub, on the other hand, is compatible with a broad range of smart home gear from various manufacturers.
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Should you buy it?
If you’re looking for a nice-looking wall-mounted photo frame, the Echo Show 15 is probably your best option, as it looks much sleeker and has a bigger display. It won’t be that great to quickly handle smart home controls, though, so you’ll have to consider the device’s main purpose before buying it.
I’ve found the Echo Hub achieves what I’ve been looking for in terms of easy smart home control and has actually replaced my Echo Show 15, which didn’t offer as many convenient control options. If you’re looking for a smart display that gives you easy and quick access to almost all your smart home devices, the Echo Hub is the one to buy.
