Please don't buy an Echo Show

We've had an Echo Show 15 in our kitchen for the past 3 years. We use it for photos and weather, keeping track of our family calendar, and setting up quick timers while cooking. While the design leaves much to be desired, we've enjoyed having it.

However, Amazon recently released an update that has completely ruined our experience. We see ads for random Amazon products every time we glance at the screen. I'd heard about this happening to people before, usually from US users, but I'd never experienced it. We paid for this thing—we paid to hang an advertisement on our kitchen wall.

Frustratingly, the UI was tweaked in preparation for the upcoming Show 21 and against all odds, it's worse. The font size has been reduced, making it harder to see from a distance, and the widget requirement has gone from 1/3 of the screen to 2/3. If you've never used it, this might not make much sense, but I'll try to explain.

The screen, which we have displayed vertically, is essentially broken into thirds. You could previously have a large, single widget in the bottom third and then a gallery of rotating "cards" like weather, photos, sports scores, etc, in the top 2/3. Now, you have to use the bottom 2/3 of the screen for widgets or not use them at all. Because we were only using the calendar widget on the bottom 1/3 of the screen, this means we now have a giant empty space below that unless we fill it with a grocery list widget that connects to an app we don't use, a weather widget that shows the temperature we already see on the top of the screen, or one of the brutal third-party widgets like a "fart button."

Since we opted to close the widget section entirely, the ads, part of the rotating cards I mentioned, now take up the entire screen. It's awful.

If you're considering buying an Echo Show, don't. If you're tech-savvy, build your own, check out a Google Nest Hub, or wait to see what Apple has planned for next year. Investing in a smart display should make your life easier—not be a constant reminder of how little your time and attention matter to the company that made it.