I have been using Amazon Echo smart speakers and displays for a few years and have observed their evolution firsthand. My first experiences with home automation were supported by Alexa-compatible gadgets, including smart lights, smart plugs, doorbells and cameras.
Over the years, I have been able to amaze visitors by getting motion alerts on my smart speakers or camera feeds on my TV, or just amuse myself by creating a Red Alert automation that would change all lights to red while sounding the Start Trek emergency klaxon.
The recent Amazon Show devices are smart, but they fill the role of an assistant more than anything.
So it was great to learn about the Amazon Echo Hub and get one for a review.
While the design lines still remind me of and Amazon Echo Show, it looks more like a tablet, with its flat back. It measures 202 mm x 137 mm by 15 mm only and sports an 8” colour touchscreen with 1200 x 800 pixels resolution. All this weighs only 365g.
The user interface is designed for home automation. On the left side of the screen, there’s a list with links to Home and Rooms, as well as your routines page. At the bottom, you have buttons to show your current media player and buttons with direct access to all lights, cameras, plugs and other devices (e.g., TV and Xbox).
The rest of the space is used for your widgets. These can be your favourite devices, room groups with all devices in that room, your shopping list, weather or your contacts.
Touching the screen, you can control an entire room group or turn on/off individual devices within the groups.
When it comes to cameras, you can watch one camera or have up to the four most recent cameras streaming at the same time, one in each quadrant of the screen. Or if you have snapshots enabled on your camera, it can show the most recent images on a Cameras widget.
The Amazon Echo Hub can also be used for camera motion notifications, so if a person is detected by one of your cameras it can automatically start streaming the video feed.
Being an Alexa-compatible device, it comes with a built-in mic and speakers. The speakers aren’t at the same quality level as the ones on Amazon Echo smart speakers, and Amazon acknowledges this, even suggesting during setup that you use an external speaker in the same room group to play music and other sounds. In reality, they are okay quality if you are not going to use it to play HD music.
The Amazon Echo Hub responds to the huge list of Alexa commands – things like “Alexa, show my driveway” to bring up a camera video feed, "Alexa turn office lights on” and so on including things like “Alexa tell me a joke” or “Alexa what’s on the calendar today?” as well as general knowledge questions and news clips.
You can also use voice to activate some of its new features, for example "Alexa, switch to the lounge panel” and it will bring up the panel for that room.
Like other Amazon Echo devices, you can use your voice to ask the Amazon Echo Hub to start playing music or podcasts from your streaming platform of choice while showing the current media and playback controls on screen. The Active Media button also shows all music or videos playing on other Alexa devices and allows you to quickly change the output to a different device, so you can control where your music is playing, all from the Hub.
The Amazon Echo Hub makes it even easier to expand your home automation by enabling a hub to connect devices using different protocols, including Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread and Matter. I tested this with some Zigbee light bulbs, and it works flawlessly.
It uses a Passive Infrared (PIR) sensor for proximity detection and automatically “wakes up” when you walk near it. It also has an Ambient Light Sensor (ALS) to manage screen brightness automatically.
You can mount it on your wall or use a frame and set it up like a stand, which is how I use it. Either way, you can use grooves on its back to wind up excess power cables and keep things neat.
It uses USB-C for power and will work with a supplied adapter or with any USB-C PD adapter with both 5V/2.4A and 9V/3A ratings. Despite looking like a tablet, it has no internal battery, so it must always be plugged in. It also supports Power over Ethernet when using a compatible USB-C Ethernet adapter.
So, there you have it. I think the Amazon Echo Hub is the home automation control panel and hub we have been waiting for. It fits so nicely into the whole Alexa experience that it’s hard not to like it.
