Amazon Echo Hub | 8” smart home control panel with Alexa | Compatible with thousands of devices

These other reviews are pretty awful, read this
Originally I was going to maybe rate this 4 stars, but honestly, this is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for and nothing even comes remotely close to it, so I’ll go ahead and list everything it does great, followed by what needs improvements, and finally what you should NOT purchase this for… and at the end I’ll go over the “general” stuff like screen and sound.IF YOU DON’T WANT TO PULL OUT YOUR PHONE & GO TO ALEXA APPThis is honestly the only reason you should be buying this. Because you can already do everything and more directly on the Alexa app on your phone. So you need to (a) see yourself using the Alexa app a lot, and (b) wish you had it on your wall.IF YOU HAVE SMART DEVICESWithout these, this is just an overpriced and very bad tablet. Maybe you want to control a few devices around your house like your lights, look at the front door camera. If your requirements aren’t too specific with these and you just are willing to take what you can get, then this is it.IF YOU HAVE MULTIPLE OTHER ALEXA SPEAKERSThis really does help bring them together, because you now have a screen, although you might save some money if you get one of the other Echo Show devices. It’s cool to have it up on the wall, be able to again, not use your phone, not pull out some tablet, to change songs.IF YOU WANT A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF SECURITY & THERMOSTATThis will display your Ring alarm status, let you arm and disarm it, and see what your thermostat is set to from another location across the house (I wouldn’t recommend putting them side by side, that’s a waste.)IF YOU WANT YOUR HOME TO FEEL “MODERN” SMARTThis reminds me of things I’ve seen at high-end hotels. It’s just cool to have a touchscreen tablet on the wall, and be able to adjust some lights, play music, adjust the temperature.___________________DO >>NOT<< BUY FOR:1) Managing your device settings. This does a poor job. Your phone can do better. This should only be there to access frequently used devices you've already set up but don't want to navigate through your phone to access.2) Speakers. This isn't it. The sound isn't awful but it's not great, and you should only use this as a supplement to other speakers you already have in your home.3) Watching videos. Don't do it. I know you might think it'll be nice to put this in the kitchen and watch something while you cook, just get some other display or tablet.4) Controlling everything. This kind of ties into #1 above but this should only be set it and forget it, quickly click what you can fit on the screen, and overview of your devices per room. Don't spend a lot of time navigating around. Just get any other tablet at that point.5) Highly specific apps. The apps on it are lackluster. Have some really cool specific idea? You won't be able to do it or it'll end up being bad. You likely won't be able to do exactly what you want, only as I mentioned very very very basic things.__________________THE REALLY BAD, DEFINITELY DON'T BUY:1) Device groups. Currently not supported. If you "favorite" a group of smart devices, it doesn't display it and you can pretty much only do one device at a time, with the "group" being the entire group like "Living Room." This was almost a deal-breaker for me, hopefully they add it later, but I've since found some workarounds for me specific use case. But I wanted to group four mart lights in a room, per room, and have it all display under favorites and could not do that.2) Smooth tablet experience. Nope, this is going to feel like a really cheap tablet because it is a really cheap tablet. You're going to have to be patient and wait one second or maybe even two for some things, and you'll see it stutter once in a while. This is still miles better than anything else like it that's meant to go on your wall. But probably one of the worst if you're comparing it to an iPad or high-end Samsung tablet.__________________The Screen:Feels like a really cheap tablet, but they make it work for what it is. The size could have been bigger but honestly then it'd look weird and not like a wall panel. I like it, I just wish there was some more customizability (there isn't really.)The Audio:Again, feels like a really cheap tablet or laptop.The Design:Works out for being wall-mounted. I like the big bezel.Portability:No. Almost none. Do not expect to unplug this and move it around.The Software:Needs some work but it's not as terrible as people make it out to be. I've noticed a few minor bugs like arming my Ring if a device needs a bypass gets it stuck with no error, just loading. Smart thermostat (Nest) if you try to set it to let's say 72 to 73, it will error out vaguely when you should remember that you need a bigger gap between the low and high number. Cameras take a bit to load but they also do that on the apps in any case. It'll only get better from here.The Cost:I wish it would have been closer to $100, but hey, I bought it at full price because I saw the value. If you do not see the value, do not buy it, you'll be disappointed. This is the type of product that's simultaneously worth $50 and $500.

Useful display with very thin audio
Useful, I have it mounted on the wall in my kitchen. Handy for pulling up a recipe, setting timers, checking weather, looking at my door camera… The energy saving display goes dark when no one is present, turns on automatically via motion detection, this feature seems to be dialed-in just rightThere’s no getting around that the audio is just plain awful, not distorted, just VERY thin sounding. It’s marginally ok for announcements/timers, but truly atrocious for music playback, by far the worst sound of any Echo device.It meets my needs, I have other gear I use for music, so four stars for all the things it does well.

This all but sucks – slow and does little
UPDATE: it’s worse than I thought. I decided to return it, but Amazon is making it very difficult to return. There is a Kohls a short walk form my house, but Amazon wants me to drive 45 minutes to a drop-off location. They know this thing sucks, maybe that’s why they don’t want to make it easy to return.This is a huge disappointment. Alexa is awesome because it’s the hub that ties all of your smart home devices together. But there was never a good interface. The app is messy, and sometimes voice isn’t the best way to control devices. I was hoping that this device called a hub would be the perfect solution. It’s not. You need to own one to realize how bad it really is.Here are some examples…-The screen is REALLY sluggish. It’s like a $30 no-name android tablet.-The icons are big and few can fit on the screen.-some screens will only display one icon at a time… I need to use the sluggish screen to scroll one at a time to see things when there is room for everything in that category.-you can’t easily – maybe not at all – customize the home screen.-if you tap the weather widget, after a delay, you get a full screen showing only the outside temperature. That is much less than the widget shows. I expected to see more detail in full screen, not less.-It’s great that it can show the status and limited control of my cielo thermostats, but… The control is temp up or down, and the power toggles on or off. Those three buttons don’t fit on the full screen – you need to scroll to see the three buttons. Seriously… the full screen will not show you three buttons at once. You need to scroll.- you can’t view and set alarms for other echo devices from it.-you can see your ring cameras. And that works pretty well.-it sees all of my Insteon light switches (that I have given an Alexa name), but I can’t organize then in a way that’s usable. There’s all on and all off buttons at the top of the lighting screen that is useless. I use an all lights off scene every night – but it’s not literally ALL of the lights. There are a few that need to stay on until the timer turns them off.-Maybe it’s possible, but I can’t figure out how to make it play music on my Sonos. I can’t even figure out how to make it play music on another Echo.-It can use POE, but Amazon won’t tell you how. Plus, how do you reboot it it you have it built into the wall?How is this any better than an echo show? If I were the project manager for this device, I would not let my boss see this version of it. It’s really bad.I gave it two stars because I want it to be great, and I suspect there are ways to make it do more things I can’t figure out. In my hands, it’s a one star product.I think I will return it. Maybe next year there will be a better one. The screen is so sluggish, that it must be an under powered CPU, not just bad programming.All of the YouTubers are pretty optimistic about this product, but I suspect it’s only because they want to keep a good rapport with Amazon so they will always get new products early.