Amazon devices have become ubiquitous in the smart home discussion, and the amount of Alexa devices is plentiful, including speakers, cameras, thermostats, TVs, touchscreen displays…the list goes on. But not all of them are as immediately useful as others. Which was the overarching flaw in our review of the Echo Show 15.
It’s the largest display in the Echo Show lineup, coming in at 15.6 inches, and has the same functionality as other Show devices, albeit on a larger scale. It’s intended to be a central Alexa hub, but in practice we struggled to find its place in our home. With the recent addition of Fire TV, though, the Echo Show 15 is primed to be a kitchen TV replacement that still has large widgets easily seen from a distance and a personalized Alexa experience thanks to Visual ID.
Enter Fire TV
For the uninitiated, Fire TV is Amazon’s own streaming OS. It comes built-in to their TVs, like the Amazon Fire TV Omni and is available to anyone with external streaming devices, including the Fire TV Cube and Fire TV Stick 4K. Through it you can gain access to a whole host of streaming apps.
There have been great strides in Fire TV’s operability over the past couple years with improvements to layout and speed, which has brought its functionality better in line with Roku and Google TV.
Rollout of the free Fire TV update began in early December 2022 for existing Echo Show 15 owners. For newly purchased units, the update will be automatically installed during setup.
Fire TV adds more functionality but limited implementation
Since both the Echo Show and Fire TV are Amazon products, they work well together with Alexa voice activation. Asking Alexa to “open Netflix” or “play The Expanse” is easy and a great solution if your hands are full.
There’s an onscreen remote for navigation, but to get the most out of Fire TV on the Echo Show 15 the Amazon Voice Remote (3rd gen) is an absolute necessity, and not in the way that it’s just a nice thing to have.
Navigation with the onscreen remote is clunky and some apps within Fire TV will not function at all without a remote. For example, it’s impossible to navigate within Netflix—or even sign in—without the remote as the touchscreen becomes inoperable.
Credit:
Reviewed / John Higgins
For full functionality, an Amazon Voice Remote (3rd gen) is absolutely necessary.
Others, such as Amazon Prime Video, have some touch functions that work and others that don’t, very often within the same screen. Scrolling through Prime Video selections on its main screen is easy by swiping with your finger. In fact, I far prefer it to using the remote as it is much faster.
Once you select a program, an overlay comes up with a play button, except the touchscreen reacts to the image behind the overlay so you then need to use the remote to navigate to the play button. When your movie or show is playing you can again use a finger to move through the progress bar.
The most frustrating part is that touch-capable versions of these apps exist. You can use them on iPads. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be available through Fire TV, too, and it’s an unfortunate oversight that they aren’t—or that the authorization process for them wasn’t completed before going live. Especially considering even Amazon’s own Prime Video encounters hiccups when trying to use touch control for everything.
Even with Fire TV, the Echo Show 15 isn’t a slam dunk
When it comes down to it, Fire TV adds purpose to the Echo Show 15, most notably as a small kitchen TV option that has smart home capability. However, the implementation of Fire TV is a bit lacking. You’ll have to pay an extra $30 for the Amazon Voice Remote (3rd gen) just to get it to work properly (note that the new Amazon Voice Remote Pro is not compatible with Fire TV on the Echo Show), which adds clutter to a kitchen and takes away from the biggest benefit of the Echo Show 15: Its touchscreen.
Hopefully in the future Amazon will improve on the touchscreen abilities of Fire TV. Until then, the addition of Fire TV keeps this classified as a decent bonus instead of making the Echo Show 15 a must buy.
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