Echo Show 15

 

When the Echo Show 15 was released about 8 months ago I knew I had to get one to upgrade my first generation Show which is really slow to bring up my cameras or do anything really.  The product is really at the end of life as far as functionality goes.  It was basically just serving as a kitchen clock and occasionally for viewing cameras, but that was getting unreliable and slow.  $250 is pretty expensive so I decided to wait until Prime Day and see if it would go on sale.  I was really lucky as it did go on sale and I was able to trade in my First Gen show, and got a gift card for the trade-in so the final cost was under $100, which was a no brainer for me.

This summer we were undergoing a kitchen renovation so it was a good time to rethink how we use technology and hopefully simplify things a bit.  One thing we really wanted to do is clean up the messy bulletin board we had on the wall with the dry erase calendar that we used for managing our family's appointments and schedules.  The echo show 15 has a sticky note widget as well as a calendar widget that would solve those use cases for us.  I also liked the idea of being able to manage all of my smart home products from the smart home widget but that leaves a lot to be desired at this point, more on that later.

My major use cases for the Echo Show 15 are as follows.

• Organization
• Calendar Functionality
• Smart Home Functionality

As far as organization goes I am really happy with how much cleaner the area looks now.  The Show 15 looks like a picture frame hanging on the wall and definitely has a cool factor.  See below:

I am most impressed with the calendar functionality.  We were able to connect our iPhone calendars with Alexa so now all of our and our kids appointments show up right of the Show 15.  This is really a game changer for my not having to remember when I have to pick up the kids from sports or whatever they have going on.

Unfortunately the smart home functionality / widget leaves a lot to be desired.  The widget only diplays six of my favorite smart devices and there is no functionality to go into a full screen to see all my devices / rooms like you can in the Alexa app.  Hopefully this functionality will be imporoved upon in the future.

Installation was pretty easy, they provided a sturdy bracket to mount the Show.  My wife weng back and forth a bit regarding where to put the device but decided to mount it to tge side of the wood enclosure for my refirgerator.  The issue with mounting ot there was the power outlet was on the other side ofteh wall.  I was ablr to pick up some plastic raceway and run the cable down the corner of teh wall which looks pretty clean.

One major issue that I am experiencing is that I am no longer able to drop in on my Alexa devices.  I was able to do this a couple months ago without issue but now it just attemps to connect but never does.  I don't think it has anything to do with the Echo Show 15 and I am unable to drop in on my Echo show 5 either.  I think it is some setting in my Alexa account that is preventing drop in but I have been unable to figure it out so far.  I even posted on some of the Alexa support message boards but they were not much help/

Another think I am a bit dissapointed with is the number of widgets available in the widget gallery.  I would hope as time goes by smart device manufacturers will create widgets for theor devices.  It would be great to have a widget that shows my sense status real time.    

I think overall this device has a lot of potentail.  I am looking forward to using it more once the school year starts and my familie's schedule starts getting crazy again.