Amazon announced the Echo Show 15, calling it “…an entirely new Echo Show…”, but when you dig into the features and specs, new doesn’t mean better in all categories. In some cases, it’s the same Echo Show, and in some cases not quite as good as others.
What’s Better With Echo Show 15
Better Screen
The most obvious better feature than previous Echo Show’s is the screen, both in size and resolution. The screen measures 15.6 inches diagonally, 2 and a half inches larger than the largest iPad, and just over 5 inches larger than its largest predecessor. You may not even need to grab your eyeglasses to read this one.
In addition to the increased screen size, the Echo Show 15’s screen is the highest resolution screen in an Echo Show to date. It’s considered Full HD resolution at 1980 x 1080, landing between the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro resolution to give you a general idea of the quality.
Alexa has been trying to convince me to watch a movie on my Echo Show 5 for some time. There’s no way I’m watching a movie on a tiny, low-resolution screen with tiny speakers when there’s a 70” 4k TV in my house a few steps away. But at 15” and decent quality, the Echo Show 15 is getting into a range that’s reasonable for viewing videos and maybe movies in some secondary locations around the house. Amazon suggests it could serve as your kitchen TV, which is a reasonable.
For comparison purposes with previous Echo Show models:
- Echo Show 5 is just under Quarter-HD at 960 x 480 (5.5” screen)
- Echo Show 8 is near HD at 1280 x 800 (8.0” screen)
- Echo Show 10 is near HD at 1280 x 800 (10.1” screen)
Expanding Usefulness
As a result of the larger screen, more widgets can be displayed at once on the screen. The pre-release photos show layouts of 5 widgets, and based on the smallest of these it looks like you could get 8-10 of them on the screen at once. There will be a widget gallery, from which you can pick and choose the widgets you want displayed on your screen. Think weather, traffic, news, calendar, news, and of course the recipes. This allows the new Show to be used as more of a family hub and central ‘kiosk’ in the home.
The Show 15 is also intended to be wall-mounted rather than placed on a desktop, countertop, or nightstand, which reinforces the “information hub” concept. If you want the stand, you have buy it separately. If you don’t have a drill to mount it, you’re in luck, Amazon sells drills too.
The larger screen and increased number of widgets may put the Show 15 in a position to tempt some away from building their own magic mirror, since the capabilities are converging toward the same purpose. (Although, you can build a magic mirror out of your old 42” TV, and there’s no 42” Echo Show (yet) ).
Visual ID – Hey, I Know You
With this model, Amazon introduces visual ID. The Show will recognize individual family via appearance and can show them information more relevant to them. Each person may see their own calendar, and their preferred news sources for example. Visual ID is in addition to identification of different people by voice, which already exists in all Show models. The visual ID feature will become available on Echo Show 8 and 10 models in the future as well. Family members “enroll” in visual ID, presumably by showing a few angles of themselves to the camera.
If the camera capabilities are something you don’t want in your home, or only sometimes, the Show 15 has a mechanical shutter which you can use to cover the camera lens more tastefully than tape or a sticky note, the same as the 5, 8, and 10 Show models. I personally like the idea of the mechanical shutter, because it’s more trustworthy than turning the camera off in a menu somewhere and then having to just believe it’s off.
New, Faster Processor
The processor is custom designed by Amazon. It doubles the number of cores over its predecessor, from 2 to 4, and is 22 times faster. That’s a HUGE leap. The processor also incorporates a machine-learning (ML) engine. The increased computing power means that many tasks like voice recognition, the new visual ID, can be performed on the device itself without the need to send that data across your network and back to the mothership to be processed. The result should be a faster interface and shorter response times.
What’s Worse With Echo Show 15
The Camera
The most obvious, and surprising, downgrade in equipment from previous models is the camera. The Echo Show 15 has a 5 Megapixel camera. The Show 10 and 8 both have a 13 Megapixel camera. Again using iPhone as a relatable reference for most, the 8 and 10 inch Shows have a camera with a resolution which is just above that of the iPhone 12. The new Echo Show 15 camera has the same resolution as the iPhone 4. Ouch!
In addition to the lower resolution, the 15 drops the ability to automatically “follow” you around the room during video calls. The 8 and 10 introduced this capability, it is lost for now with the 15.
There’s no discussion of the camera choice in any Amazon materials I could find. My suspicion is that the new visual ID feature is the driver behind the decision.
Here is my theory on the lower-spec camera:
The technology stack they are using for visual ID can’t support the higher resolution camera yet. They want the feature to be a solid performer when they introduce it, so they choose a camera which the technology works well with. They will work on improving the technology and then backport the feature to the Show 8 and 10 with the higher resolution cameras. Then a generation of 15s could be introduced with higher resolution cameras, or by that time maybe it’s an even larger screen size. This all, of course, takes 1 to 3 years to accomplish.
OK, that’s my theory as a product guy, I do not know any of that to be a fact.
The Speakers
The Echo Show 15 is equipped with 2 speakers, 1.6” in diameter. The larger the speaker, the better it is able to reproduce low (or bass) frequencies. Smaller speakers sound tinnier. The smallest Echo Show uses a slightly larger speaker than this one, at 1.7”. The fact that there are two speakers in the 15 means it’s capable of more volume, and more importantly, stereo. It does not help with the sound quality, or fidelity however.
It’s a curious sacrifice to make. Since this is now to be our kitchen TV, and it’s finally something we might actually watch a movie on, one would think the audio would have held more importance. Maybe the sound is something they are experimenting with. The Show 8 used a pair of 2-inch speakers. The Show 10 used a pair of 1-inch speaker for the high frequencies, and added a 3” speaker to in the base to add the low frequencies. The speaker setup on the Show 15 is akin to a scaled-back Show 8.
What’s The Same With Echo Show 15
I won’t spend time on these, as you are already familiar with them. If not, there are plenty of write-ups on these features around the web.
- Amazon Alexa
- Amazon Photos
- Amazon Music
- Recipe, Restaurant recommendations, Food delivery
- Smart home control / integration with products like Philips Hue lights
- Video Calls
- Streaming
- The price – it’s the same as the Echo Show 10
About post author
