Editors’ Note: This is the most recent version of the Echo Show 8. Read our review from October 24, 2023 below.
Now in its third generation, the Echo Show 8 remains Amazon’s most compelling smart display. With an 8-inch screen, it strikes a good balance in size and power between the cheaper and slower Echo Show 5 ($49.99) and the more expensive and specialized Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15 ($249.99 each). It’s more expensive than its predecessor at $149.99, but its well-balanced, room-filling sound and fast performance help justify the increase in price. The third-gen Echo Show 8 is a useful smart display for virtually any room in your home, earning it our Editors’ Choice award.
Design: Mostly Unchanged
The third-generation Echo Show 8, available in black or white, keeps the same general shape as its predecessor with a few tweaks. It still features a flat screen that is angled slightly upward and a rounded, fabric-covered body that holds the speaker drivers. The glass on the front is now completely edge-to-edge, the camera has been moved to the middle of the top bezel (from the upper right corner), and the body is slightly pinched in. It’s a little larger at 4.2 by 7.9 by 5.5 inches (HWD), but only by a few fractions of an inch.
On the top edge of the Echo Show 8 sits a mechanical privacy slider for the camera, a separate button to mute the microphone, volume up and down buttons, and two pinholes for the far-field microphones. The back holds a connector for the included power adapter.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Specs: A Faster Processor and Matter Support
Audio and video capabilities, at least on the hardware side, seem to be completely unchanged from the second-generation Echo Show 8. The third-gen model has the same bright, colorful 1,280-by-800-pixel 8-inch screen and two 2-inch speaker drivers.
The main audio improvement here comes in the form of software, as it now supports spatial audio and can analyze the acoustics of the room it’s in to adjust its balance. That said, there are limits to what audio processing can do with a stereo speaker arrangement in a relatively small device, so if you really want Alexa-driven spatial audio, we suggest checking out the Echo Studio speaker ($199.99) instead.
It also sports the same camera as the previous Echo Show 8 and the Echo Show 10, a 13MP sensor that supports auto-framing. It’s a big step up from the 2MP camera on the Echo Show 5 and the 5MP camera on the Echo Show 15.
The third-gen Echo Show 8 features an octa-core processor with Amazon’s AZ2 neural engine, a nearly two-year-old chip that also powers the Echo Show 15 and the Echo Pop smart speaker. It’s still a marked upgrade from the second-gen Echo Show 8’s MediaTek MT 8183 chip, enabling faster performance. Alexa is extremely responsive, answering most of my commands instantly in testing. Touch controls are also smooth and content plays quickly.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
The Echo Show 8 is well equipped for wireless connectivity and gets a few new home automation tricks. Just like before, it supports dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi for connecting to your home network and Bluetooth for streaming music from your phone. For this generation, Amazon has added a Zigbee smart home hub, a feature previously available only on the Echo Show 10 and some Echo speakers. It also now supports the Matter smart home interoperability standard and is equipped with a Thread border router, which is another wireless network protocol Matter devices can use alongside Wi-Fi. Unlike an Echo speaker, however, the Echo Show 8 can’t function as a Wi-Fi node for your Eero mesh network.
Privacy-conscious users should be cautious of the Amazon Sidewalk wireless network the Echo Show 8 can connect to. It’s a wireless protocol that lets different Amazon devices, including Ring security cameras, talk to each other and enable a communication mesh network for extending their usable range and tracking lost objects. We generally recommend opting out of it for privacy reasons, which you can do when setting up the Echo Show 8.
Voice Assistant: Alexa’s Abilities
Like every Echo device, the Echo Show 8 is built with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in mind. Just say, “Alexa,” (or Amazon, Computer, Echo, or Ziggy, if you change the wake word in the Alexa app), and give the smart display a command. Alexa has been steadily evolving with new features and language processing improvements, and is very useful for controlling your smart home, searching for content, making calls, checking your schedule, making lists, and simply delivering general information like the weather.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Alexa is great for searching and playing music, podcasts, and shows on the Echo Show 8. For audio, Alexa enables voice playback from Amazon Music (of course), Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Audible (naturally, since Amazon owns it), Deezer, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn, and Vevo. The list of Alexa-enabled video services includes Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Fire TV Channels, Hulu, Netflix, and Tubi. That hardly covers the full span of streaming media services, but it’s a solid collection that should cover most music and TV tastes. Keep in mind that the screen is only eight inches, so it’s not the best primary display for watching your favorite shows.
Smart home control is another big draw for Alexa. The voice assistant has been compatible with thousands of smart home devices for a while now, and support for the Matter standard makes it even more powerful. Alexa can work with almost all major connected home security cameras, lights, locks, and thermostats, and can also control most TVs and many soundbars and media streamers. The Echo Show 8 will display live feeds from many home security cameras and offers touch controls for most connected lights and other smart home devices.
Touch Screen: Tap to Do (Some) Things
The Echo Show 8 can be controlled via its touch screen, though using your voice gives you more options to bring up exactly what you want. Most of the panels that the home screen rotates through have some form of touch interactivity, like tapping on a headline to open up a video. You can enable or disable any of the dozens of different types of Amazon content suggestions, with only a handful of consistently useful options, unless you really want to constantly get tips on what you can do with your smart display.
The limited screen space on the Echo Show 8 means it can’t show multiple widgets at once like the Echo Show 15 can, so widgets effectively act as single apps. There are five buttons in the upper right corner of the home screen that provide quick access to your choice of four widgets, with the fifth button opening the widget library. By default, the four other buttons let you open a very limited selection of music suggestions and recently played tracks, a calendar view, a contact list, and any shopping lists you’ve made.
The widget library is initially baffling, and at first seems completely useless on the Echo Show 8. If you try to add any widgets from the library view with the default settings, it gives an error that the maximum number of widgets are already on the device. That’s because the four customizable widget slots are already taken, and the library doesn’t let you remove them. Instead, you have to tap and hold on the buttons to remove each one.
There are only a few dozen widgets available, and whether they’ll be useful to you depends on your taste. I like having the calendar accessible, as well as two other widgets that can play thunderstorm sounds and cat-calming music when I want. There’s not a whole lot of usefulness beyond that, and curiously, the Silk web browser isn’t available as a widget. You can access the web on the Echo Show 8, but you need to ask Alexa to open the browser first.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Swiping down from the home screen opens a useful menu from which you can access the Echo Show 8’s settings, browse streaming music and video services, and control your smart home devices.
Camera: Make Calls and Watch Your Home
Amazon puts cameras on most of its Echo Show devices primarily for video communication. You can use the Echo Show 8 to make audio or video calls to any other Amazon user with an Echo device or the Alexa app on their phone. It also lets you make calls over Skype and Zoom, and place phone calls to most numbers in the US, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. The camera and microphone provide bright, clear audio and video to the person you’re talking to, and the Echo Show 8 supports automatic face tracking when you walk around in front of it. The screen is large and detailed enough, and the speakers get sufficiently loud that you should have no problem seeing and hearing the person on the other end of the line.
The camera is useful for more than video calls, enabling the Echo Show 8’s new optional Adaptive Content feature. It’s a simple little trick that changes what’s on the screen based on your distance from it. If you’re far from the screen, it shows a picture frame view or information in a large, easy-to-read format. When you get close, it automatically shifts to a more condensed and detailed view. For example, the weather widget might show a big icon and the temperature when you’re standing across the room, but as you approach it shows a full forecast. It’s a nice touch, and one that has also been added to the second-gen Echo Show 8.
(Credit: Amazon/Will Greenwald)
If you’re willing to leave the camera on when you’re away, you can use the Echo Show 8 to keep an eye on your home. The Alexa app lets you tap into the device to get a live feed from the camera, with audio and the ability to talk through the smart display. It only provides a live view, though, and can’t make recordings or send notifications if it detects unwanted activity like a dedicated indoor home security camera.
Audio: Bigger Sound Through Software
The Echo Show 8 delivers room-filling audio, but don’t expect much low-frequency. Our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” produced some hints of thump that significantly distorted at maximum volume. The top volume level isn’t very loud, and seemingly applies digital signal processing (DSP) to tamp down on the speakers’ output to prevent sub-bass movement from physically harming the drivers.
Bass is handled conservatively on other tracks, though not to the point of making the speaker sound hollow or tinny. The opening acoustic guitar plucks of Yes’ “Roundabout” receive enough resonance in the low end to give a sense of fullness, with plenty of treble detail to let the string texture come through. When the track properly kicks in, the bassline sits a bit back but doesn’t disappear from the mix, while the drums, guitar strums, and vocals all come through with a pleasant balance.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Spatial audio can’t offer a significant benefit in terms of directional imaging since the Echo Show 8’s stereo speaker drivers are so close together. However, the technology helps the smart display produce a larger-feeling sound field than the second-generation model, assisted by the new automatic room acoustic adjustments.
It sounds loud and clear, letting me hear balanced, detailed music from across my apartment. While its limited bass means it won’t shake the walls, it’s still a solid upgrade in sound output considering the speaker drivers themselves are unchanged.
Still the Best Smart Display
The third-generation Echo Show 8 is a bit more expensive than its predecessor and its upgrades are fairly subtle. Even so, it’s still the best smart display for most people thanks to its big sound, sensible screen size, and Alexa’s extensive abilities. It’s louder and sounds better than the Echo Show 5, and it’s significantly more affordable than the Echo Show 10 and the Echo Show 15. The Echo Show 8 strikes just the right balance for Alexa lovers, earning it our Editors’ Choice award for smart displays. Google Assistant users, meanwhile, should check out the $99.99 Nest Hub and the $229.99 Nest Hub Max.
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The Bottom Line
The third-generation Amazon Echo Show 8 remains the best Alexa smart display for most homes thanks to software-based audio enhancements and other subtle upgrades.
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About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
