Amazon Echo Hub: Enter the era of smart home remote controls

Amazon Echo Hub’s inexpensive, can read you the news, tell you if somebody is outside and control all of the smart devices – but is it a world beater? We’re not convinced.

Amazon's brand new Echo Hub is a wall-mountable smart home station.

Sometimes it’s better to stick with what you know.

That was our first impression of Amazon’s latest consumer tech device, the Echo Hub – an iPad-sized smart home control station that showed us that while Apple, Samsung and Google have come a long way in the touch screen space, Amazon can hardly compete.

The device isn’t bad to use by any means, but the touchscreen experience is just a lot different and slower than the devices we pick up and play with every day.

Full disclosure: this is one device we have spent several months waiting for, following its announcement in September last year.

When we first reviewed its older sibling, the Echo Show 15-inch, we thought it was cool but we just couldn’t understand the theory behind it. For one thing, its screen was comparable to the size of a shoebox but its width was closer to laptops standing side by side.

While it was good that it could stream Netflix and play music, we couldn’t work out who’d want such a large device.

Then along comes the Echo Hub which, at just 8 inches, fixes Amazon’s size conundrum – or at least according to us.

But the next question we’re left pondering is what does this device really do better than its old shoebox-sized counterpart?

The Echo Hub’s home screen.

The answer is not so much. It’s been almost two years since the Echo Show 15 hit shelves. But maybe that was Amazon’s plan after all; maybe the Echo Hub is a no-thrills smart home remote.

Electronics manufacturers are all testing the waters in the way of smart home remote controls. Google’s Pixel was one of the earliest with docking stations for its phones and the Pixel tablet; Apple is allowing outsiders to make charging stations for its iPhones that automatically put them in standby mode and display a clock and calendar; and Amazon had the Echo Show and now the Echo Hub.

From afar the device does look like a form of smart clock or calendar, although once you get closer to its presence sensor it shows all of a user’s customisable settings, from smart devices to security cameras.

The device is small, it’s light and it’s definitely not portable – powered by a USB-C port. I think it’d be fair to say almost everyone would rather hang this 8-inch model up on a wall rather than the old 15-inch counterpart.

The Echo Hub transitions to a smart clock when a user is not in range.

Curious about Amazon’s motives, we asked: “Alexa, what’s the point of the Echo Hub?”

“The new Echo Hub is an easy-to-use control panel to manage your smart home,” was the response.

Fair enough. And if we put aside all of our expectations, the device, at $329, does exactly what it’s designed to do: provide touch screen access to your smart devices, products and more with the added benefit of being able to tell you the weather, read you the news and look up recipes.

Unlike the Echo Show, you can’t watch Netflix but you can stream ABC iview, Redbull TV, TikTok, YouTube and, of course, Amazon Prime. You can also listen to Spotify or Amazon Music.

Given the device is so small, its speaker quality isn’t as great as the show but it appears its speakers are more for the Echo Hub to respond to users.

Also unlike the Echo Show, users need not worry about their privacy as much. Although the device knows you’re within range, it’ll never be able to see you as it doesn’t have a camera.

The control buttons on the side of the Echo Hub.

The verdict? Just because we expected something different, doesn’t mean you will.

If you’re don’t expect fireworks then at $329 this is a perfectly functional smart home control panel.