Amazon Echo Show 5
The Echo Show 5 delivers Alexa onscreen at a low price – just don’t expect incredible audio quality
“Move the switch on the top-right edge to the side and the camera is not only blocked physically but also disabled electrically”
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PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300echo
If all battles were won purely by force of numbers, Amazon would have had the smart speaker market sewn up long ago: with the release of the Amazon Echo Show 5, its Alexaenabled troops have now swelled to 13. That’s a huge battalion of products, many of which share largely similar duties. The question is: does adding yet another speaker to the lineup make sense? Or are you better off with one of the company’s many other existing smart speakers?
Best on Show?
The Amazon Echo Show 5 is, effectively, a smaller version of the company’s £220 Echo Show 2 ( see issue 291, p65). It has most of the same features and functions of that speaker and, as with any other Amazon Echo speaker, you control it with your voice. Utter the wake word “Alexa” and then ask it to perform various functions for you, from reading the weather forecast out loud to playing radio stations, music and podcasts.
In its compact, alarm-clock sized body – the Show 5 measures only 148 x 73 x 86mm – Amazon has squeezed a bright, clear 5.5in touchscreen, powerful speakers, a twin far-field microphone array and a camera for video calls. It also has the compute power and wireless connectivity (802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) required of a modern voice-controlled Amazon Echo speaker.
The Echo Show 5’s big party trick, however, is its price, which is a barely believable £80. That’s £40 less than Amazon’s other alarm-clock sized smart speaker, the Echo Spot. It’s £10 less than the second-generation Echo, £9 less than the Google Home and £39 less than the Google Nest Hub, which is Google’s smallest smart display.
The only other rival of note, if we’re talking small speakers with displays, is the Lenovo Smart Clock ( see issue 299, p62), which looks eerily similar and is just as cheap, but runs Google Assistant instead of Alexa.
Same by design
In fact, on casual inspection, both the Echo Show 5 and the Lenovo Smart Clock look like they’ve come out of the same design studio. They both have a small, rectangular screen at the front, tilted back at a slight angle, and they both have a fabric-covered wedge at the rear, housing the speaker driver and other components.
The Amazon Echo Show 5 is the larger of the two products, however. It has a 5.5in 960 x 480 resolution touchscreen, where the Lenovo’s measures 4in across the diagonal with a resolution of 800 x 400. Look closely, and you’ll see the Echo Show 5 has more external features too.
Both speakers have volume and mute buttons (on the Show 5, the latter is more easily accessible on the top edge) but the Echo adds a couple of extras. It has a front-facing webcam for video calling and there’s a 3.5mm output so you can connect the Show 5 to a more powerful existing hi-fi system or standalone speaker.
The Echo Show 5 is also slightly better equipped than the 10in Echo Show 2 because the webcam has a privacy shield built in. Move the switch on the top-right edge to the side and the camera is not only blocked physically but disabled electrically. In this mode, the two far-field microphones mounted on the top edge still work, though.
Soft boost
In theory, popping a display on a smart speaker is a great idea. It adds the potential to do so much more: watch video, read the news, get hints and tips and access setup items that would otherwise require you to fiddle with your smartphone. The trouble is, I don’t think Amazon has gone far enough with its smart displays in the past and, with the Echo Show 5, little has changed.
While it’s possible to watch BBC News snippets and TV and movies from Amazon’s Prime Video service, and even play games such as Deal or No Deal (I’ll stick with my Xbox, thanks), when it comes to non-video-based activities such as streaming radio Amazon seemingly doesn’t care about what’s onscreen.
With radio via TuneIn or music from Spotify, for instance, all you get is an icon or cover art and text describing the station and album/ track. Where’s the clock? The date? The weather icon? Why do I have to ask Alexa to “show the homescreen” or ask “Alexa, what time is it?” to check the time?
The good news is that, while these particular issues remain unresolved, the Echo Show 5 does benefit from a light user interface refresh. Swipe left across the touchscreen and a new panel appears, populated with shortcuts to core features – Communicate, Smart Home, Music, Video, Routines and Alarms – in addition to a selection of “Discover Alexa” cards that provide newbies with help on what to do with the smart speaker.
The Echo Show 5 now has adaptive brightness, allowing it to adjust the screen backlight automatically according to ambient light. It also has a new feature called “Sunrise Effect”, which uses the screen to gently light up your bedroom 15 minutes before your alarm goes off – but only between 4am and 9am in the morning. That’s handy, although less effective on bright summer mornings or for those who work shifts.
Elsewhere, the Show’s new integrations include a selection of how-to videos from wikiHow, answering dilemmas such as “how to tie a tie” and “how to cut a pineapple”, plus the ability to display video streams from Arlo security cameras and baby monitors directly onscreen. These are nice additional features but they aren’t strictly related to the release of the Show 5.
Clarity of voice
The Echo Show 5 is a compact speaker and that usually spells bad news for sound quality. Surprisingly, though, it’s quite pleasant to listen to at medium-to-low volume levels. There’s little sub-bass but the Show 5 makes a good fist of representing mid-bass frequencies and above.
Radio voices, whether you’re listening to the cricket on Radio 5 Live Sports Extra or your favourite podcast, sound balanced and full-bodied. And, if you turn up the volume, the Show 5 can fill a medium-sized room with a startling amount of sound.
In terms of outright quality, this speaker can’t compete with the Echo 2 or even the regular second-generation Echo. In the mid-to-upper registers, music often sounds muddy and congested, especially when you turn up the volume. In fact, the mid-bass can become overbearing at times. Fortunately, the Echo Show 5 has a simple bass/mid/treble equaliser setting you can use if the default balance isn’t to your liking. It’s also worth making sure that the bottom edge of the speaker is free from obstructions because that’s where all the sound comes from on this speaker, not from the upper rear surface or the sides – it’s all emitted from one narrow grille facing down towards the surface it sits upon. Presumably, this is why the speaker sounds so unusually bassy. Microphone quality is mixed. The Show 5 has a pair of microphones located on the top edge of the unit, between the mute and volume buttons. Against a moderate amount of background noise (around 53dB), I found these disappointingly unresponsive. While the Show 5 responded reliably to the Alexa wake word at close range (up to a metre-and-ahalf away at conversational volume) I found myself having to raise my voice from 2m away or more. That means that, while fine for use as a bedside clock or desk speaker, it’s not the best fit for noisier environments. When I put it on my kitchen table, I found I had to repeat “Alexa” and raise my voice far more often than I do with the Echo Show 2, whose microphones are more numerous and face forwards, instead of upwards as they do on the Show 5.
Final say
In many ways, the Echo Show 5 isn’t anything special. It sounds okay, but its microphone array isn’t great and it doesn’t move the smart display concept on significantly over the Echo Show 2.
What it does do, however, is bring the price of a smart display down to a far more reasonable level. At £80, even with its limitations, the Echo Show 5 is a steal. Not a cast-iron five-star bargain, perhaps, but a very good value smart speaker indeed. SPECIFICATIONS Quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT8163 processor 5.5in 960 x 480 touchscreen mono 1.65in speaker 2-microphone array 3.5mm audio output (for external speakers) 1MP camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth (A2DP and AVRCP) 148 x 86 x 73mm (WDH) 410g 1yr limited warranty