The Echo Show – has Amazon finally created a product consumers need?

We are obsessed with making everything in our lives ‘smart’. So when Amazon introduced us to the Echo last year, we thought we’d died and gone to smart heaven. Until now... Enter the Echo Show - here to make our homes more intelligent (probably more than we ever thought we needed them to be). The Amazon Echo Show is a smart home device that combines virtual assistant Alexa with a display screen. Gone is the cylinder where the Amazon Echo once lay, and in its place is a boxier device with a seven-inch touch screen. It’s also Bluetooth-enabled for you to link up to other Echo Shows in your home so you can share messages from “dinner’s ready” to “we’re leaving in five”. Bearing in mind my mother is slightly hard of hearing if she’s got the door closed and the radio on, this would be ideal for when I want to offer her a cup of tea. Taking a look back over the past 12 months’ worth of smart home launches from Amazon, I’m intrigued to find out what’s next from the tech giant. How much smarter does it think our lives need to be? I didn’t think I needed a device to pick my outfit for me, but now I can’t stop thinking about the Echo Look. Is Amazon creating tech we actually need or is it leading from the front to change what we want? Look-wise? It’s not the most breath-taking design and definitely isn’t as sleek as the original Echo, but regardless, the Echo Show is an undeniably cool product that will be flying off the shelves when it’s launched in the UK whether people really need it or not. Image: Amazon