Amazon Echo Show

SOLID ALL-ROUNDER.

WITH A 10.1-INCH display, plus-sized form factor and powerful, bass-heavy speakers, the second-generation Echo Show is a direct rival to the Google Nest Hub Max and Lenovo Smart Display. It has a similar set of core features, enabling you to use your voice to call up any number of functions such as music playback, smart home control, online information search and weather forecasts. But you can push it further with Alexa Skills and built-in web browsing functionality.

There’s a good amount of local content in the Alexa Skills database, including video apps (ABC iView, 7 News, Sky News, Fox Sports Live News, AFL) and radio apps (SBS News, Nova, 2GB). You can also access several local services using your voice, such as hailing an Uber, ordering a Domino’s pizza, checking your Westpac or NAB bank balance, browsing through recipes on taste.com.au, and looking for jobs on Seek.

The downside is that having to manage these third-party skills adds to the complexity of the Echo Show, and you often have to know the exact voice command to get it working. Trying to find recipes on Taste. com.au, for instance, was an exercise in frustration, with the Echo Show continually apologising for not being able to find what I was looking for. This echoes (pardon the pun) Alexa’s broader shortcoming in that it can’t match Google’s intelligence.

While the Echo Show lacks YouTube integration, you can use one of the two mobile web browsers built-in (Silk and Firefox) to access almost any website you like. Sadly, Netflix and Stan don’t work through either of the browsers, so you’re limited to Amazon Prime Video for bingewatching.