Listens, talks, plays music and videos, allows you to video call friends and relatives, rotates the screen following you with his gaze as you move around the room. Had Amazon’s Show 10, the latest smart screen in the Echo family, wheels, it could perhaps compete with Boston Dynamics robots. Or at least it would represent the low-priced version, certainly limited, but at least of some use.
It is a 10-inch touch display, with a non-record-breaking hd resolution identical to that of the Echo Show 8, with a 13 megapixel video camera, microphone and a speaker system equipped with two tweeters for high and medium and a woofer for the basses that adapt to the surrounding environment as was already the case on the Echo Studio. Result: it sounds beautiful. Not so much for the amount of detail, which is not as high as on the Sonos, but for the extraordinary ability to spread the music in the room with an inevitable surprise effect on the listener.
A good night’s sleep? Google launches the new Nest Hub in Italy
Beyond the miracles of the algorithms in terms of music reproduction, the peculiarity of the latest generation Show 10 lies in the 360-degree rotating screen. The new 13 megapixel wide-angle camera adjusts the frame to always keep the subject in the foreground and in the center of the image using both the internal motor and the focusing system. And it all works quite well even if the response, especially for the autofocus, is not always fulminating. Every so often, you go to figure out why, Show 10 turns the wrong way. In our case all of a sudden he stubbornly started looking out of the window enjoying the view over the rooftops of Rome.
It also supports group calls as long as the person or people we want to contact have the Alexa app, the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant. Communications are of good quality, both for audio and video. To focus everything on this function of video calls, talking with the grandmother to show her grandchildren or chatting with a friend while cooking or even participating in a video meeting being able to continue the work on the PC, were the Facebook Portal, smart screens launched in 2019 that Amazon has now somewhat imitated.
Facebook sets foot in the house. Smart Portal screens arrive in Italy
Jaime D’Alessandro
In terms of entertainment, they range from movies and TV series on Prime Video to those of Netflix. As usual, there is no compatibility with the Tidal music streaming service, among the very few in high resolution, while there is the one with Spotify and obviously Amazon Music. You can then view the scheduled appointments in the diary, check the weather updates and customize the shopping list by organizing your day with Alexa. However, we are far from the levels of Google’s Nest Hubs, which are integrated with search engine services including email, calendar or traffic information taken from Maps. Finally, you can also use the Echo Show 10 to control various compatible products for the “Smart home”, such as security cameras, lights, thermostats, simply by voice.
This new heir to the Echo family, which inaugurated the fashion of smart speakers starting from 2014 and then evolved into the sub-category of smart screens, is however a rather bulky device and in order to rotate the screen freely, it must be placed in a free space. Although it is still possible to place it near a wall or near other objects, the rotation is adjustable and the system itself stops when it encounters an obstacle, in a normal-sized room it stands out. The cost? The highest of the whole Echo family: 249.99 euros. However, it must be said that the Show 10 has functions that no one else has and sound performances that are very close to those of the Echo Studio, until yesterday the most expensive of all.
.