Amazon’s Echo Show 15 is now available to order

You can now order Amazon’s mammoth kitchen or sideboard smart display – the Echo Show 15. Deliveries will start on 9 December.

Significantly larger than the spin-around Echo Show 10, the 15.6-inch display can do the same things other Echo Show devices but home screen widgets are designed to show off more at-a-glance information for busy families and homes.

It’s a communal device, in other words, and can adapt content to suit who is talking to it; just like other Echo devices, Show 15 will recognise who is in front of it, though this time it can recognise who is in front of the device providing they’ve been enrolled – Amazon calls this Visual ID.

You can have widgets for everyday items like weather, sticky notes, shopping lists and your calendar and arrange them however you want. Amazon also said at the device’s launch back in September that there is a widget library that third parties can design for, too. 

The black frame and white surround houses a Full HD display. You can watch content from Netflix and Prime Video but frustratingly still not YouTube which remains a huge miss in our book.

Likewise, you can video call other Echo Show devices and use Skype, but Zoom isn’t yet available in the UK yet it is on some Echo Show devices in the US. It also doesn’t include the 13 megapixel follow-me camera setup from last year’s Echo Show 8, instead sticking with a 5 megapixel front camera.

Other cameras in your home – such as a Ring doorbell – can be displayed using picture-in-picture, so you can keep an eye on things at the same time as you’re watching a show or following a recipe.

Amazon also announced during its annual Echo and Alexa launch event that next year you’ll be able to review requests associated with specific household members who have set up Voice ID in the Alexa app or by visiting Alexa Privacy Settings.

So you will be able to say, “Alexa, update my privacy settings,” and Alexa will help you adjust settings like how long voice recordings are saved and how they are used on a per-person basis. As with other Echo Show devices, there’s a physical camera shutter and mic mute on Echo Show 15.