Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsImpressions after two years heavy use
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2023
We're approaching the two year mark with the Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen) in our kitchen and as such it has been used heavily. We've tinkered around with just about every bell and whistle that is available on it. Ultimately, we've decided that it is just a poor design across the board and consequently a frustrating user experience.
Honestly, most of these "bells and whistles" really aren't something anyone would make use of other than to "try them out" once as we've done. The news and sports widgets may interest you, but I feel like we are drowning in those two types of widgets on every screen we encounter these days; phone, watch, PC, work laptop, home laptop, tablet, TV. I feel like I have enough news, weather, and sports widgets to last me a lifetime at this point.
We ended up disabling everything except the rotating photos, so it's nothing more than a glorified digital photo frame for us. It's decent for that, but frankly the majority of digital photo frames out there will do a better job. Just stick an Echo Dot next nearby for Alexa...
As far as the lackluster photo experience, for example, you can't make it default to photo frame mode, or even force it to stay in that mode for an extend period of time. It always ends up back at the home screen after awhile. So, if you set it up to do so, you end up with rotating Amazon Photos photos on the "home screen" which you get forced to. The home screen photos are decent but, just like everything else in the Echo Show, still feels buggy and clunky. When you set a 10 second or 30 second photo rotation (or whatever) it definitely doesn't follow that setting. Sometimes it will hang on a photo for several minutes, other times it will rotate in 10 seconds. It feels like that setting is for Photo Frame mode, which (as mentioned) is essentially a useless feature, since it does not stay persistent.
Another drawback while being forced into the home screen for making it a digital photo frame is the clock/date are in the bottom left hand corner, and they are absolutely massive. They cannot be adjusted or disabled, as most everything else on the device... very little customization options. We have like 700 clocks in our kitchen, and would totally be fine with disabling the Echo Show clock... Often it will rotate to a photo and then the focal point of the photo ends up blocked by the huge clock. This happens a lot to us because we end up taking family selfies, and (having the longest arms currently) I normally take them, so I end up in the upper right of the photo, with the wife more towards the left, and then the kids in the bottom left... so, the huge clock cuts the kids out of the picture and most of the time half of my wife gets cut. That clock really does wreck a ton of photos, family selfies or not. Long story short the photo experience is decent, but there are way better options/devices out there, especially since the other options will integrate with other services such as Apple or Google photos, but with the Echo Show you are forced into Amazon Photos which is severely lackluster compared to the "other two"...
Aside from the photos I have no idea why anyone would like this device, let alone rate it 5 stars. The speaker looks like it should be awesome, but it's also lackluster. The hardware just kinda sucks... it is quite sluggish in terms of performance.
We do have Spotify integration set up and do also use that a bit just because my kids play music on alexa in general a lot... but, if you have read this far, then it's not going to be a shocker when you hear we feel the Echo Spotify app is a clunky, sluggish, and just overall lackluster experience when compared to the Apple, Android, PC, Mac, and Web Spotify apps.
It seems like it could be great for video calls. We did try that some when I was traveling for work and it's just too sluggish and clunky, we always ended up flipping over to our phones. Also forget the "follow me" screen rotation mode thing, it sounds cool, but works like garbage. Same with streaming videos in general, just doesn't work well, I'd rather just use a small phone.
All of that said, having a digital alexa photo frame is decent enough... These things aren't too pricey, especially when you catch them during Amazon's big sales...
But.... the two straws which broke the camel's back, and makes me want to go office space this thing, are:
a) Our family loves shopping on Amazon, we spend a disgusting amount on Amazon every year, so take this point for what it is... but in pure slime ball fashion Amazon forces advertisements on the screen which pop up periodically trying to get you to buy random stuff. Sometimes, this stuff may not even be something you'd like advertised to your kids or guests. There is absolutely no way to disable these ads. So they charge you 100 to 300 bucks for something like this, and force their ads on to you. That in and of itself should be a hard stop for anyone considering one of these.
b) I'm not sure how this next point is working behind the scenes over there at Amazon, but it appears that any new or updated feature forces itself to be turned on (even after previously disabling it). This is a regular occurance. Like I said we've literally disabled everything, but things just pop up out of nowhere, or are periodically turned back on, such as news, sports, joke of the day, etc etc. And nope, it's not my kids messing with it, they can't even reach it.
TTLD;, the Echo Show 10 kinda sucks, part due to hardware issues, but bigger part due to software issues, which leads me to believe whatever version comes next will also suck. That said, 45,458 reviews as of this post, and 4.5 stars... so the masses appear to love this big weird clunky rotating wonky crappy weak sauce robot tablet... :D
