Echo Show first look

Echo Show - Black

I finally decide when they dropped the price to $150 to give it a shot. My main thought was to get a scanner that worked more reliably than the Wand. Unfortunately so far the scanner appears to be rather useless For example I tried scanning some cheese and buns. Twice each with the Wand. Though is said "I'm having trouble understanding right now you can see they pretty much made it.

 The show scanned them easily but then just said it could not find a product matching the UPC. I then tried a TP-Link Smart Plug (HS100) I had just received from Amazon and it found that. So I'm guessing it only works with stuff Amazon carries making it worthless for my use of adding stuff to a shopping list.

I was hoping I would have more options of what to display on the screen as well. Basically the default screen saver shows the time temperature and cycles between headlines and suggestions of things to try. There are other screen savers but from the reviews they seem to have music which can only be silenced by turning all the audio off. So more like setting a video on loop than a real screen saver. For short list of the skills written for the Show look here.

Otherwise seems to sound and does voice recognition as well as the full sized Echo. So far there really does not seem to be much the Show does that needs the screen.

Note there does appear to be a browser buried down in the Show. For how to get at it and used see How to Access the Amazon Echo Show's Hidden Web Browser While using it is probably more trouble than it is worth it does mean some useful skills maybe coming soon that utilize it.