Hands-on: Echo Show 8 is like a tablet grafted onto a smart speaker

Enlarge / Thanks for the suggestion, Alexa—it just might be time to revist Ferris and friends this weekend. Oh, yeah! (credit: Jim Salter)

Amazon's newly redesigned Echo Show 8 offers a form factor with a ton of potential. The relatively small smart speaker/display combo is roughly the size and shape of a small Kindle Fire in a stand and offers an extremely high-resolution camera as well as stereo speakers, an eight-core CPU, a mic array for better voice recognition and processing, and a relatively heavy, flat base which positions its screen well for viewing at either desk or chest height.

We were lucky enough to get two of the new devices for hands-on testing before launch and have had them for about a week.

Overview and controls

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  The black rectangle at the upper right is the Echo Show 8's camera—when shuttered, it's covered with a plastic tab of the same color as the rest of the device's chassis. [credit: Jim Salter ]

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