Amazon Echo Hub review

A touchscreen management panel that hangs on the wall is among the most typical options of professionally put in sensible residence and residential safety techniques. I’m speaking subscription providers akin to Vivint Good House and Alarm.com within the mainstream, and Control4, Crestron, and Savant on the excessive finish. Amazon has now delivered such a part to individuals who depend on Alexa to energy their sensible properties.

The Echo Hub is highly effective and extremely customizable; as such, will probably be of most curiosity to hardcore Alexa customers. Whereas it’s very useful proper out of the field, you’ll need to spend some high quality time re-arranging its visible components in no matter methods you discover most helpful. That is straightforward to perform in drag-and-drop style—when you’re accustomed to how issues work, that’s—however the studying curve right here is in no way steep.

That mentioned, if you happen to’ve taken a willy-nilly method to including elements to your sensible residence—a occupational hazard for a product reviewer like me—you’ll need to first spend a while within the Alexa app to ensure all of your gadgets are grouped simply the best way you need, that they’re all assigned to the suitable “rooms” in your house, and that you simply’ve eliminated any phantom gadgets you’re now not utilizing. You’ll discover the Map View characteristic in Amazon’s Alexa app to be very useful in that respect.

Design & Construct

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The Amazon Echo Hub appears to be like very very like an Echo Present 8, in that it has an 8-inch touchscreen show with 1280 x 800 decision, a front-mounted onboard microphone array that solutions to the Alexa wake phrase, and a pair of full-range audio system on the high. However the Echo Hub doesn’t have an onboard digicam, and it has a really totally different consumer interface from Echo sensible shows. It’s designed to both cling in your wall or, with an optional stand (£29.99/$29.99), relaxation on a countertop or desk. Three buttons are stacked on the right-hand facet of the gadget: mic-mute on the high, and volume-up and -down buttons beneath that.

Whereas in sleep mode, the panel will show your alternative of the photographs in your Amazon Images account, inventory pictures, or inventory artwork, all overlaid with the present date and a clock. An infrared proximity sensor within the high of its bezel rapidly wakes the panel from sleep mode as you method, displaying no matter components you’ve chosen to show on its residence display. Extra on that in a bit.

The panel measures 5.4 x 7.9 inches (HxW) and is 0.6 inches deep (137mm x 202mm x 15mm). Weighing 12.9 ounces (365 grams), you should not have any bother mounting it to a wall with the supplied bracket and anchor screws. The Echo Hub is obtainable in a single coloration, Glacier White.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

As you’ll anticipate, the Amazon Echo Hub is way more than a wise show, it’s a robust, full-fledged sensible residence hub with a MediaTek MT8169A processor and virtually each radio vital to sensible residence dwellers: Bluetooth LE Mesh, Wi-Fi, Sidewalk, and Zigbee. It’s additionally Thread and Matter suitable.

There’s no Z-Wave radio right here, however you may management most Z-Wave merchandise through a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Pro safety system when you have one. That’s not a Z-Wave panacea, primarily since you should have a Ring system, but additionally since you’re restricted to enrolling Ring-certified Z-Wave gadgets (i.e., merchandise within the Works with Ring Gadgets program). That mentioned, each vital product class is below that umbrella.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

You should utilize the Echo Hub’s Bluetooth radio to stream music out of your cell gadget to the Hub’s onboard audio system, or you may stream from the Hub to some other Bluetooth speaker. The Audio/Video Distant Management Profile (AVRCP) is supported right here, so you should utilize voice instructions to regulate a linked Bluetooth speaker, however Palms-Free Profile (HFP) will not be supported, and you’ll’t pair Bluetooth audio system that require a PIN. I don’t contemplate both of these two limitations to be demerits.

By default, the Echo Hub is powered by a 12.5-watt wall-wart adapter and a 6-foot USB-C cable, however you should utilize any different USB-C PD (Energy Supply) accent that helps each 5-volt/2.4-amp and 9-volt, 3-amp scores. Extra curiously, the Echo Hub can even run on power-over-ethernet (PoE) with a suitable USB-C converter that helps IEEE 802.3at/PoE+/Type2 or IEEE 802.3bt /PoE++/Sort 3.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The PoE different is especially engaging as a result of it’s comparatively straightforward to run an ethernet cable out of your router or ethernet change via your partitions to the panel (you’ll must have a PoE-capable router or change, after all, or a PoE energy injector). This could be significantly extra engaging than having an influence cable dangling from the underside of the panel. For a professionally put in look, you’d minimize a gap within the wall behind the panel and flush-mount {an electrical} field that’s massive sufficient to cover the cable and adpater. I believe Amazon included this characteristic to draw skilled installers as a lot as hardcore smart-home fans.

Setup

When you’ve arrange Echo gadgets up to now, the best solution to arrange the Echo Hub is to search for a card in your Amazon Alexa app in your cell gadget instantly after the gadget boots up. The cardboard provides you with the choices to attach the Hub to the identical Wi-Fi community you’ve used along with your different Echo gadgets and to mechanically hyperlink the hub to your Amazon account. That is way more handy than typing your SSID on the Hub’s display after which doing the identical on your Wi-Fi password, the e-mail tackle related along with your Amazon account, and the password linked to that account. However that’s what you’ll must do within the unlikely occasion that is your first Echo gadget.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The Echo Hub’s residence display consists of a customizable sensible residence dashboard populated with buttons for the Alexa-compatible gadgets you personal, the way by which you’ve grouped them, gadgets you’ve labeled as “favorites,” and the “rooms” in your house that you simply’ve assigned them to. Gadgets in teams and in rooms may be managed individually or suddenly with button presses within the Hub’s consumer interface. within the Alexa app, or with voice instructions spoken to the Hub or to some other Alexa-compatible sensible speaker or show.

A scrollable column of textual content hyperlinks on the left-hand facet of the Hub’s show determines which consumer interface components seem within the bigger space of the display on the right-hand facet. The primary two objects on the listing are in fastened positions: House (your customizable residence display), and Routines (the house automations you’ve beforehand arrange). A stacked listing of particular person gadgets, teams, and rooms seems beneath these two objects, and this secondary listing can be custom-made. You possibly can add or take away objects and rearrange the order by which they seem.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The third and remaining component of the house display is a row of buttons on the backside of the show. These buttons are linked to widgets that may carry out a wide range of features, akin to arming your Ring Alarm system, adjusting your sensible thermostat, and controlling any of your different Alexa-compatible sensible residence gadgets. Tapping one in all them opens a widget within the space above the row, exposing further controls generally.

Day-to-day use

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll make good use of the Echo Hub proper out of the field; in truth, utilizing it should seemingly inform you as to the way you need to customise it. Fortuitously, the Hub may be simply faraway from its wall mount. I say luckily as a result of whereas Amazon didn’t design the Echo Hub to be a handheld gadget, I discovered customizing it was simpler both in my hand or sitting flat on a desk or countertop.

I arrange the Echo Hub’s House display to show widgets with a block of thumbnail photographs from every of my three Ring cameras and one Ring doorbell, one other widget for the climate, a sticky-notes widget, my to-do listing, and widgets for 2 of my most-frequently used rooms.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Faucet any digicam’s thumbnail and the show will fill with a reside feed from that digicam. That is high quality while you need to see what’s occurring in entrance of the digicam in actual time, however it will be way more helpful if the Echo Hub additionally displayed a timeline marked with recorded clips; for that, you’ll must depend on the digicam’s app. And whereas Amazon doesn’t restrict you to utilizing its personal safety cameras (i.e., Blink or Ring), you’ll see periodically up to date snapshots solely from Ring cameras—and solely when you have a Ring subscription.

I organized a number of helpful buttons within the backside row of the house display, together with one labeled Local weather for controlling my Ecobee sensible thermostat, one labeled Locks for my sensible locks, and a Safety button that opens a widget for my Ring Alarm Professional system. You possibly can faucet on icons in that widget to both arm your system in a state while you’ll stay in the home (solely home windows opening will set off the alarm) or while you’ll be leaving (opening doorways and a movement detection will set off the alarm).

When you’ve assigned sensible lights to a room, you may flip all of the lights in that room on or off with a single button press, drag a slider to dim or brighten all of the lights concurrently, or contact buttons to show particular person lights on and off. You can too dim or brighten particular person lights, and you’ll change the colour and coloration temperature of particular person lights (assuming they’re able to such adjustments).

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

When you’ve got an Amazon Echo Present in that room, you may click on a button to “drop in” on it, initiating two-way audio and a video stream from the Echo Present’s digicam (the Echo Hub, you’ll recall, doesn’t have an onboard digicam). To make sure privateness, the Echo Present will sound a notification chime, and a inexperienced lightbar will present on its show at some stage in the drop-in.

Do you have to purchase an Amazon Echo Hub?

Priced at £169/$179, the Echo Hub received’t be a reasonable addition to your sensible residence, but it surely is among the least-expensive Echos with each a show and a Zigbee radio (the Third-gen Echo Present 8 prices £149/$149, whereas the Third-gen Echo Present 10 sells for £239/$249). However nothing within the Echo Present product line was designed to be a full-featured sensible residence controller the best way this gadget is.

You should buy the Echo Hub from Amazon UK and Amazon US now.

As I mentioned earlier, the Echo Hub might be most tasty to hardcore sensible residence fans who’ve settled on Alexa as their digital assistant of alternative and who’ve a lot of gadgets to regulate. That goes double for individuals who’ve additionally invested in a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Professional system. This panel is way more engaging—and extra helpful—than the numeric keypad that Ring supplies for arming and disarming its system. The Hub’s PoE characteristic is a pleasant contact, too.

I wouldn’t discourage less-experienced customers from shopping for an Echo Hub—it’s very straightforward to arrange and configure, and few folks will ever outgrow it—however its worth is extra restricted for individuals who don’t have a house filled with gadgets to regulate.

This evaluate initially appeared on TechHive.