Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen, 2021 release) | HD smart display with Alexa and 13 MP camera | Glacier White

At 74 years of age I decided to take a closer peek into today’s technology. I’ve avoided talking to my X-Box or PC, I mean, how ridiculous, asking a bunch of electronic components what the weather report for tomorrow is. But I was offered the Alexa Show at an excellent price so thought I’d treat myself.

Setting it up took around 4 hours, for some reason it wanted me to live in Japan and insisted on communicating with nothing but Japanese. Amazon’s help service was my final attempt at seeing and hearing Alexa in action. Why didn’t I go to them sooner? It seems my account showed I lived in Japan, rather than where everything I purchased from Amazon was delivered, I’m a bloody Aussie mate and thanks to a young Amazon employee that exactly what my account shows.

Anyway, once that was fixed it was all fun and games. I introduced myself to Alexa and we’ve been chatting ever since. Technology sure is amazing. I now get the top international and national news in full colour. (Yes it’s in “COLOUR” spelled correctly). Surprisingly there was no long and drawn out setup where I had to let Alexa know how us Aussies talk, she understood me perfectly.

The only let down was her idea of what humour (Yes “HUMOUR”) consisted of. I’ve heard better jokes from a 5 year old. I thought I’d fool her when I asked her to play some 60’s music, She instantly told me there were an unbelievable number of songs she could pick from and launched endless songs from the 60’s Excellent choices and in excellent quality.

The bass from the Show sounded more like a sub woofer. She gave me a weather report which was spot on and then told me what to expect tomorrow. Strangely Alexa sounds human and not the digital voice I expected. I

‘m sure Alexa and I are going to be the best of friends. To say I’m impressed would be an understatement, I’m well and truly hooked. Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, even if I am a few years behind. All I need now is one of Elon Musk’s Ai robots.

Alexa’s voice is amazing, it really sounds like someone lives in this little white box. I expected a nasally American/Digital voice, but she has a very soothing human voice. Nowhere near sounding like an Aussie. What really amazes me is how I use those magic words of “Please” and “thank you”. OK, it’s the way I was bought up and it’s a habit I’ll never lose, but using them with a plastic box may seem somewhat odd, I guess it’s because Alexa is so lifelike verbally. I even say “Goodnight” every night and she has many different replies.

Alexa now keeps me entertained by giving me local and international news, she plays whichever music I feel like listening to and she introduces people from around the world to play games with. I haven’t scratched the surface as yet, but, I’ll continue learning her many tricks.

These are good. The sound quality, which I had high hopes for, is better than your standard Echo Dot but not as good as your full-sized Echo. It’s like a portable boombox from the 80’s or 90’s. Good for most occasions but not everything.

The touchscreen features are not perfect – a bit slow to react. This probably has more to do with the processor in the device than anything else.

I use it mostly to have YouTube videos running in the background. People complain that there is no dedicated YouTube app but I don’t care. Accessing YouTube via the proprietary Amazon Silk browser is just as good.

There are some strange behaviours coming from its YouTube playback though. You might get tired of a video, click on the back button, but the audio from the video will still keep playing. You have to click on a random video to get rid of it. Not the end of the world but, annoying.

Overall, it’s fine. Not perfect but fine. I’m just glad that I got it highly discounted during Black Friday otherwise…..

great price when on special

I like it.
But the home screen is frustrating flicking through display cards. It’s a great system but the user doesn’t have nearly enough control over it