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Amazon recently announced the $180 Amazon Echo Hub, a smart home control panel that streamlines management of all the connected devices in your home. Although you can use your voice to control your device, tapping the touchscreen to control your devices in organized groups is much faster and more responsive. More importantly, smart devices can be controlled by anyone in your home, not just the person who has the Alexa app installed on their smartphone.
I’ve been using the Echo Hub for a week now, and it controls most of the smart devices in my home (as a tech critic, I have a lot!), from lights and locks to doorbells and switches. I understand. More importantly, a slim 8-inch hub organizes and manages these devices so he can easily see them in one place without having to open 10 different apps on his phone. Even my non-technical cat sitter was able to turn on hard-to-reach lights and play music.
Is this smart home hub and controller worth $180 if you already have smartphone apps and perhaps an Echo Show in your home? Read about my experience setting up and using the Amazon Echo Hub to learn more about this simple and comprehensive device Check whether it is suitable for your home.
Amazon Echo Hub
Amazon Echo Hub is an attractive and intuitive control center for households that are already all-in on smart home devices, especially devices from Amazon and partners.
$180 on Amazon
$180 at Best Buy
$180 at Home Depot
What I liked
The Hub is a stripped-down Echo Show
The Hub looks like a smaller version of the Echo Show 10 that’s currently in my kitchen, with its large white bezel, volume controls on the side, and a 1280 x 800 touchscreen, but it’s a completely different device. Yes, you can play music (although the speakers aren’t as good as the show) and ask Alexa questions, but the main/home screen is a simplification for devices grouped into specific rooms, such as the kitchen or deck. It’s just a dashboard to display. This is the category where all your smart lights or cameras will appear, to name a few.
And that’s the best part. There are no circular stories to make you want to click, and thankfully there are no ads or a built-in camera. Designed to help you manage and control your smart home with your voice, swipe, or tap on the screen. All your devices are in one place, so you don’t have to dim the lights, turn up the thermostat, or open an app to see who’s at your door.
This hub is perfect for wall mounting (mount and screws included). Or you can use it with a counter/table stand, which is sold separately for about $30. I installed it on a stand in my kitchen, but you can install it anywhere as long as there’s an outlet nearby. The hub comes with a 6-foot USB-C power cord and adapter/wall plug. The back of the hub has a grooved cutout for wrapping excess cord, allowing you to mount it flush against a wall or display it neatly on a stand.
The interface is more intuitive and less difficult to use than the Alexa app
Amazon hasn’t just moved the Alexa app to a larger touchscreen. We moved your existing smart home device information from the buggy, cluttered, and confusing Alexa app to a clean, interactive interface in the hub with widgets, panels, and shortcuts. At a glance, I could see quick controls for all my lights, cameras, and locks, as well as recent security camera snapshots.
The screen is well-organized, with a sidebar on the left that lists rooms and routines for easy access to control all devices in one group. Clicking on “Kitchen” opened a panel on the main screen that displayed the Philips under-cabinet lights, table lamps, and other smart devices in that room. Control the entire room with just a tap of the “All on” button. You can also tap on specific devices to control them individually.
When you click on a light, you’ll see a panel of all your smart lights, with those that are lit turning dark blue. Tap to turn it off, and tap the three dots at the bottom right of the panel to reveal a slider that lets you adjust brightness and color depending on the light.
If you have a Ring alarm security system, you can set a routine that activates the system, lowers the thermostat, and turns off the porch light by saying, “Alexa, good night.”
What I particularly liked was the ability to customize and organize the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen. This bar displays shortcuts to access specific device categories, such as locks, lights, cameras, thermostats, and switches. I use a lot of lights and cameras, so it was easy to slide these categories to the front of the row for faster access. Tapping on each of these will bring up a panel that shows the names of all the devices in that group, as well as options to control them all at once or individually. This makes it easy for cat sitters to tap a smart her plug that lights up lamps in hard-to-reach places, something they couldn’t do before.
A widget panel in the center of the screen displays useful information such as the day’s weather and a calendar. All of this is also customizable. I like to look at my calendar and weather first thing in the morning, so I was able to drag and drop them to the front and add additional widgets like to-do lists.
Store your camera feed in one place
The hub brings together all the security cameras and video devices in your home and displays them in one place. You can summon a live view from your Alexa-compatible device by tapping on an individual camera or selecting multi-view to see her four cameras at once. This didn’t always work well for me. There may have been a problem with your review unit or the review unit. App bug. Amazon replaced my unit. The new unit worked more reliably, but still had intermittent connectivity issues.
For example, I was able to see live view from my Ring Video Doorbell Pro, but it didn’t always connect when I tried to view it in multiview. Additionally, these cameras cannot be customized. Only the four most recently active feeds are displayed.
What I didn’t like
Can’t leave the Alexa app
I’ve never been a big fan of the Alexa app, so I was hoping Amazon would overhaul the app to make it more intuitive and less cluttered. Unfortunately, the Alexa app is still a part of my life, as I had to use the app to add and remove devices, create routines, and add favorites. I had to spend a significant amount of time in the app deleting old, unused products and updating groups to only display existing devices on the hub. None of these can be done on a hub.
Not a replacement for the Echo Show
Although the Hub can play music and videos from YouTube and other platforms, the Hub is not a replacement for your Echo Show if you currently use it to consume content or make video calls. yeah. There’s no camera on the 8-inch screen. The top speaker is adequate, but doesn’t sound great when playing music. Ideally, you can pair the hub with another Show device or Bluetooth speaker for better audio. Active Media shortcuts allow you to easily switch to other connected devices, but they didn’t work in my testing.
On the plus side, it’s great at displaying watches and digital photos. The hub uses an infrared sensor to recognize when a user approaches and smartly displays his home screen as he approaches. When you’re not around, you can go into ambient mode and see just the date and time, or on the photo display, which you can customize by selecting a specific photo from the Amazon Photos app or from a variety of curated art options available. Display.
If you compare
The Echo Hub isn’t cheap at $180, but it’s relatively affordable when compared to control panels from brands like Crestron and Control4. If all you need is an Echo Show device with Alexa to play videos and music, and you don’t use smart home devices much, you might be better off buying the Echo Show 8. $99 — or the Echo Show 15, which acts as a smart wall display.
conclusion
If you have more than a few smart home devices and are looking for an intuitive and easy way to control them all from one place, Amazon Echo Hub is the device for you. It’s a full-featured smart home control panel that gives anyone in your home instant access to lights, cameras, switches, and more. This will be welcome news for people who are usually the only ones who have the Alexa app on their phone and are asked to turn lights or smart phone switches on and off. Yes, this happens.
The $180 hub is perfect for smart home users with Alexa-compatible smart home devices, or for those planning to build a smart home and don’t want to bother with various apps or additional device-specific hubs. The built-in radio supports Zigbee, Bluetooth Low Energy, Matter, and Thread protocols and acts as a hub for compatible devices. That makes it perfect for use with Alexa-owned brands like Ring and Blink, as well as thousands of other smart home devices, according to Amazon.
That said, if your home relies on Google Assistant, the Echo Hub isn’t the right choice. Instead, look to the Nest Hub smart display.
Note: Prices above reflect retailer listed prices at the time of publication.
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