FIRST TEST AMAZON ECHO SHOW 8The greatest
Show, man
mazon has become
definitive in a bunch
of different areas.
It’s the master of
online shopping, the czar of
ebooks, the king of tax-dodging
and the galactic emperor of the
smart home.
Blinking Alexa eyes and ears
live in millions of homes across
the UK. And the formula is prettybasic: Amazon Echo gadgets are
cheap and easy to use.
The Echo Show 8 continues
this simple strategy. It’s an
eight-inch smart screen with
speakers good enough to act
as a mini hi-fi, and at £120 it
costs no more than you might
have spent on a Bluetooth
speaker a year or so ago.
It sounds miles better thanthe Echo Show 5, costs a lot less
than the 10in Echo Show, and
therefore can’t really fail.
Guess what? It doesn’t. But
there are a couple of points that
are worth considering before
you go blowing dosh on this
smart screen. The display isn’t
quite as funky as rivals, there’s
no support for Netflix, and it
shakes like a defecating whippetwhen the volume is cranked up
to 11. Also, Google and Amazon
still don’t get along, so you’ll
have to find a workaround to
enjoy those YouTube videos
while preparing the dinner or
sitting on the bog.
But hey, it still gets our seal
of approval for a number of
reasons – many of which we
will divulge, like, right now...A
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£120 / stuff.tv/EchoShow 8The multitasking Echo Show 8 sits right in the sweet spot for smart
displays, making it probably Amazon’s most useful gadget yet