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Amazon’s Echo Show 8 is our pick for the best smart display for Alexa users, and it’s now on sale for $75 at various retailers. While we’ve seen this deal before, it’s still about $20 below the 8-inch display’s typical street price and $55 off Amazon’s list price. For reference, the device’s all-time low is $70.
We gave the Echo Show 8 a review score of 87 when it launched a couple of years ago, and we currently recommend it in our guides to the best smart displays and best smart home devices. It generally offers the best blend of price and performance within Amazon’s smart display lineup; the Echo Show 5 is a bit too small for general-purpose use, while the Echo Show 10 and its rotating display are much pricier and bulkier. The 8-inch, 1,280 x 800 resolution display here, on the other hand, is sizable enough to make video calls and photo viewing comfortable but not so large that it’ll look out of place in a kitchen or bedroom. Its built-in speakers are capable of filling a room, and the whole thing is powerful enough to pull up the weather, control your smart home gear, stream video and do other Alexa tasks without much sluggishness. And while no smart speaker or display is really ideal for those protective of their privacy, the Echo Show 8 has a physical camera shutter and mic mute button for when it’s not in use.
Like all Echo devices, the Echo Show 8 will work best if you’ve already invested in other gadgets that work with Alexa. If you’re not in that ecosystem but still want a smart display, the 7-inch Google Nest Hub might be a better buy in this price range, as it integrates better with common Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube. (The latter only works through a web browser on the Echo Show.) It lacks a camera for video calls, though that might be a good thing for the more privacy-conscious. Nevertheless, if you’d prefer an Alexa-based smart display, this is a decent deal.
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Jeff Dunn