Amazon launches 15-inch Echo Show

Amazon has launched its latest generation Echo Show smart display device.

The new Echo Show 15, as the title would suggest, comes with a 15.6-inch, 1080p full HD display. Rather than the previous generation Echo Show devices, the new model’s bigger size is designed to be mounted to a wall (though it still can be placed on a counter) and operates in both portrait and landscape orientations. 

While it comes with a number of features such as visual ID and a new customisable homescreen complete with widgets, the device is the most streaming-oriented Amazon Echo Show to date.

With TV makers increasingly finding less value in producing smaller-sized displays, Amazon appears to be filling the gap with the new Echo Show 15. At US$249.99, the device is being positioned to act as a streaming device for a kitchen or other room where a larger modern TV may not fit. 

In terms of streaming, Echo Show 15 offers access to Prime Video, Netflix and Hulu, with support for Sling TV and TikTok coming soon. 

The device is powered by the next-generation Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor, a machine learning (ML) inference engine with a quad-core scalable architecture and 22x more TOPS (trillions of operations per second) than the previous generation.

Tom Taylor, senior vice president, Amazon Alexa, said: “Today, families juggle multiple competing priorities – what time to drop the kids off at soccer practice, what to make for dinner, or when to schedule the next appointment– the list goes on and on. With Echo Show 15, Alexa can help. Echo Show 15 brings everything that makes your household tick into one place. With a redesigned home screen and Alexa widgets, you can customize Echo Show 15 to see your shared family calendar, manage to-do lists and reminders, find meal inspiration, and keep track of your incoming packages. Plus, Echo Show 15 can adapt to your home environment with full-screen photos or art, so it’s always there when you need it, but fades beautifully into the background when you don’t.”