Amazon Echo Show
Shares rank 12 of 19 smart speakers by recommenders
Recommended as a cheap video-calling and clock display, once set up. Most common caveat: it shows ads, sometimes even when set to no ads.
Recommended as a cheap video-calling and clock display, once set up. Most common caveat: it shows ads, sometimes even when set to no ads.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 41%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap compared with alternatives
“They offer more or less this, but do so at a fraction of the price”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Apple HomeView” “Devices that were $50 for a lot of their useful life”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Apple HomeView” Useful beyond Alexa after setup
“I turned an Echo Show from an annoying ad machine into the device a Chumby always could have been”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “LineageOS Statistics” “I can finally retire this ad machine and be Alexa free.”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Apple HomeView”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Shows ads most of the time
“The Alexa's with video screen will start to show ads no matter now many times you set it to no ads.”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Warren Buffett dumps $1.7B of Amazon stock” “the show shows ads most of the time, when I really want it to show the clock face instead”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Warren Buffett dumps $1.7B of Amazon stock” “It's horrible as it just shovels advertisements at you all the time.”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Apple HomeView” - Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products”
- Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Apple HomeView”
- Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “I Fired Google”
Pushes Alexa and Alexa+ features
“So far it's exactly as crappy as Alexa, but only because I haven't waded deep enough into configuration.”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “A 30B Qwen Model Walks into a Raspberry Pi and Runs in Real Time” “Now it's getting aggressive about pushing the Alexa+ stuff”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft Office renamed to "Microsoft 365 Copilot app"” Limited functions, no sideloading
“I direly wish I could sideload an actually useful UI onto it, but there aren't any methods of doing so yet.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Meta enables adb on deprecated Portal devices” “it's almost unable to do anything else most of the time”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “I Fired Google”
Other smart speakers people recommend
The four most recommended other smart speakers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Siri | 165 | 715 | 19% | 12 | 7 yrs23 owners | — |
| Amazon Alexa | 45 | 131 | 26% | 11 | — | — |
| Bose SoundTouch smart speakers | 37 | 18 | 67% | 1 | — | — |
| Google Assistant | 33 | 64 | 34% | 10 | — | — |
| Amazon Echo ShowThis page | 7 | 10 | 41% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's horrible as it just shovels advertisements at you all the time.”
“we got an Echo Show 8 for my elderly mother in law years ago for video conferencing and she loves it”
“Devices that were $50 for a lot of their useful life”
“They offer more or less this, but do so at a fraction of the price”
“I can finally retire this ad machine and be Alexa free.”
“I don't love building on/relying on deprecated hardware no longer in production”
“I turned an Echo Show from an annoying ad machine into the device a Chumby always could have been”
“it's almost unable to do anything else most of the time”
“the Alexa Show that had the audacity to display ads.”
“I prefer Echo Show 5's overall size and lack of battery over Portal Go.”
“I direly wish I could sideload an actually useful UI onto it, but there aren't any methods of doing so yet.”
“Adding ads to Echo Show devices after purchase was a bold move”
“I had the same experience until I upgraded my Echo”
“I went from an "Echo Show 5 (1st Gen, 2019 release)"”
“the show shows ads most of the time, when I really want it to show the clock face instead”
“The Alexa's with video screen will start to show ads no matter now many times you set it to no ads.”
“So far it's exactly as crappy as Alexa, but only because I haven't waded deep enough into configuration.”
“Now it's getting aggressive about pushing the Alexa+ stuff”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.