Amazon Echo Show 5 (newest model - 2024) - Black

The Echo Show 5 Black is a 5.5 inch touchscreen with Alexa behind it, small enough for a bedside table or the corner of a kitchen counter. Everything you would ask a speaker, but with something to look at: the weather rather than a description of it, a recipe you can follow, a video call, a camera at the gate.

• The Echo Show 5 Black is a bedroom device, so start with the privacy
• A 5.5 inch screen is the right size for a nightstand
• What the screen adds over a speaker
• Drop in, and the children
• Which one to buy

The Echo Show 5 Black is a bedroom device, so start with the privacy

Two things on this device are physical rather than settings. The camera has a shutter you slide across the lens with a finger, so the block is a piece of plastic and not a toggle that an update could change. And a separate button cuts the microphones electrically. On a screen with a camera that is going to live a metre from a bed, those two are the specification that matters most, and they are the reason people who will not put a camera in a bedroom will put this one in.

A 5.5 inch screen is the right size for a nightstand

Big enough to read the time, the forecast and a timer from across the bed. Small enough that it does not dominate the table or light up the room. The clock face is yours to personalise, which means it earns its place as an object before you have asked it a single question. Black is the version that reads as a small dark rectangle and stops being noticed.

What the screen adds over a speaker

The weather rather than a description of it. A recipe you can follow with your hands busy. A video call to another Echo Show or to the Alexa app. And a compatible camera at the gate pulled up on the screen without touching your phone, which is the one people use most in a house here.

Drop in, and the children

Call another Echo elsewhere in the house, or drop in on a child bedroom to hear whether they have actually gone to sleep. It is an intercom that happens to have a screen, and in a house on two or three floors that turns out to be worth more than the video calling.

Which one to buy

The same screen in white suits a pale room. If you want a display with no camera at all, the Echo Spot has none. For a bigger screen and a Zigbee hub built in, the Echo Show 8 is the step up.

The camera is 2 MP with a physical sliding shutter, the speaker is front firing, and Wi-Fi is dual band. For how the Show range has evolved, see Wikipedia.