Echo Hub (Newest gen) | 8" smart home control panel with Alexa | Compatible with thousands of devices

Was an early adopter of the hub. I now have one in most rooms. I previously worked around having a device like this using a fire tablet.The hub allows you to add groups or rooms to the main screen. Rearrange the devices so your most important ones are at the front. It allows you to view cameras and handle your doorbell.It acts like an Alexa show - in that you have the home page and screen saver that shows photos.You can setup routines to alert you of things and enable the cameras to switch on when events occur.I just wish they would show some growth in the operating system, there hasn’t been any significant noticeable difference in the software since launch:

The media could not be loaded. Good screen, wakes up when you walk in front of it, it is relatively quickly reacting, the speaker could be better - we have it paired with echo for better sound quality.The device is thin and easy to install, it quickly adds devices and screen is sufficiently bright in very strong light and dim enough at night not to disturb

This is a great product. Works well with smart gadgets. Can see all of the lights and status in my home easy to speak to turn things on and off or press it on the screen. Really easy to set up and use the Alexa app. I have it set to show me my garden on the ring camera of movement is detected. Can also set routines, for example “Alexa, goodnight” and will turn lights off, tv off etc. it’s also great to be able to see at a glance if lights have been left on upstairs and turn them off. Great value for money. Sound quality is great. Useful Alexa device.

I'm updating my review on this as I may have been a bit harsh initially. Though its fair to say I have still returned it.I see reviews asking whats the problem it's just a control screen, what do you expect? Well, firstly that's not how it was marketed. A Home Hub, with lots of pre-hype about its capabilities over the preceeding months made most people expect more than just a 'control screen' but that's not my biggest problem with it anyway.I have owned (still own) multiple echo shows of multiple generations (many 5, 8, 15 shows and kids fire tablets, kindle readers etc). I am a massive adopter of the alexa home environment. And I have been an IT tech guy for decades professionally.This is the least responsive, most glitchy and barely useful device out of all the amazon devices I have owned. But that isn't my problem with it.Yes, it needs a major software overhaul to meet the promises they made. Yes it looks like they designed it in 2014. But it does fill a tiny gap in the echo market that will prove useful to some people ( myself included) one day.It is not easily customisable to fit individuals different set-ups. It is in fact very limited in that area, often filling the screen with 10% what you wanted and 90% what they think you want.For example, I want to turn my lights up and down using the on screen dimmer/slider. Great, it does that but.. I have 1 kitchen light fitting with 3 bulbs in it. It will display the kitchen light slider BUT fills the rest of the screen with 3 more boxes, kitchen light 1, 2 and 3. Pushing all my other items off the screen.I dont need each bulb listed separately in it's own control box when i have the light group as a whole already. But you can't change that. You are stuck with Kitchen Light, kitchen light 1, kitchen light 2, kitchen light 3. Thats the same for my living room lights. My dining room lights. Etc. 3 rooms light switches fill the device with a dozen unnecessary on/off buttons.Still, not why I returned this device. I could have waited til a software update to fix these issues.My biggest problem is that the device itself is less responsive, less useful (and obviously requiring large software improvements) than say, a kids 7" fire tablet. And I mean the kids tablet is massively more useful in many respects.You can get one for under £60. This 'hub' is £160+This is the problem. Yeah, some people may be happy with how it works, I honestly think they will fix a lot of the software issues and improve the UI over time, but it is way above the price point it should be at for the functionality and performance it lacks.If you want this (and I really wanted this!)WAIT for a major software update / next generation release. And buy it in the Black Friday sale. You will probably be happy with it at that point.I may repurchase this in a generation or two, but as it stands use the money to get a decent show and use the phone App and voice to control your home.Side note: I traded in one of my other devices to get the 25% trade-in discount. They won't transfer that to another eligible show ( I was going to get another show 15 because its pretty awesome) and they will not return your traded-in device. Its in the small print apparently.Despite it literally being called a 'trade-in' on every page, the amazon customer service person insisted it was not a trade in but a promotional discount.Consider yourself warned.

I am a huge fan of Amazon's Alexa. I have echo devices in all the rooms in the house, I only watch TV via the Fire OS using a mix of fire sticks, cubes and OMNI TV's. I have smart heating and light switches throughout the house. It's safe to say that I am heavily invested in the Amazon's Alexa echo system so you can imagine that I have been eagerly awaiting this product. On paper it does everything I wanted it to... but... in reality it just misses the mark on so many levels.Straight out of the box I noticed Amazon missed a huge opportunity in the design. The back plate that you mount it too is about the right size to mount to a 1 gang cavity backbox. So I though perfect, this is great for cable management, but NO, the holes are 1cm wider than a backbox! 1cm! come on Amazon, what a missed opportunity. It would have been so simple to make it backbox compatible but you didn't. And this is the theme all the way through, there are missed opportunities which make you wonder what they were thinking.The OS allows climate control - and as I have mentioned we use Tado smart TRV's in every room. in fact one of the reasons I wanted this is so that my family can control the smart home features without me having to get my phone out and open up each individual app. But frustratingly you can only adjust the heating in a room if it is already on. So if you have a schedule - like me - and the heating is set to off in a particular room, you can't turn it on from the smart hub. This is maddening! You cant even boost heating for all rooms like you can in the APP. if there was a dedicated Tado widget perhaps it would be possible to do from that - but - as I discovered while trying to get around this blatantly obvious issue, there isn't one. In fact there are surprisingly few widgets available. When Apple launched the iPhone there were 500 Apps in the app store ready to go, I only have 5 available smart home widgets in addition to the 6 that are already displayed on the home screen! That is woefully low.There are aspects of the hub which work really well. Functionality is sleek and smooth for the things on offer, but at this price point, and from Amazon, I was expecting much more! It just doesn't seem polished, or tested. It almost seems like the people developing it don't actually use smart home products in their own homes so they were trying to guess what a user might want and missing what we actually need.The fact that you can view you home cameras on it is great, but why the doorbell camera doesn't popup when someone rings it is baffling! Why miss this. It's simple. doorbell rings, camera should popup - it does on my TV! Why wouldn't it on the home hub. Just another missed opportunity.Also, while talking about price point, while not a must it seems nuts that the system which allows you to interface with your home automation, doesn't have a battery of any kind but is plugged in at the wall. if your wife unplugs it to do the hoovering, there is no backup power. not even 10 minutes. Why? Amazons own fire tablet is £50 cheaper than the home hub, and google nest home hub is nearly half the price at just £89. There is serious competition out there and Amazon just seem to have been very lazy with this product.There is more that I could write but this is already a very long review, the general gist is that there were so many missed opportunities that make the home hub really disappointing.Conclusion: It's hard to be impressed with the Home hub when comparing it to what else is on the market. Amazon really need to pull their finger out and get some serious software updates and widget options to justify the high price point. It is a shame because I have really been looking forward to this device and I wanted to love it sadly I am left disappointed.

Absolutely love this