Amazon is doubling down on its dominance in the smart display arena with two major additions to its Echo Show lineup: the fourth-generation Echo Show 8 and the brand-new Echo Show 11. 
These devices not only sharpen Amazon’s hardware design game but also highlight the company’s ongoing ambition to fuse powerful smart home functionality with improved audio-visual experiences, all while keeping prices within reach for most households.
For years, the Echo Show 8 has been the go-to middle-ground option between Amazon’s smaller bedside displays and its bulkier living room companions. The refreshed Echo Show 8 for 2025 represents a significant refinement of that formula. At first glance, it’s slimmer, sleeker, and far more stylish than its predecessor from 2023. The bezels are noticeably thinner, making the 8.7-inch panel feel larger even though the footprint hasn’t really changed. This clever redesign maximizes screen real estate without adding heft, and the 13MP front-facing auto-framing camera remains tucked discreetly in the top bezel. The resolution now nudges forward to 1340 x 800 pixels – a modest bump but enough to make text and video playback appear crisper in everyday use.
Beyond the numbers, the upgraded screen benefits from enhanced brightness and wider viewing angles. This ensures visibility whether you’re checking recipes from across the kitchen or watching a movie from the couch. While it still doesn’t break into Full HD territory, Amazon emphasizes improved clarity across different lighting conditions, an area where previous Echo Shows sometimes struggled.
The audio architecture has seen one of the biggest leaps. Unlike older Echo Shows that pushed sound sideways or backward, the fourth-gen Echo Show 8 channels audio straight at the listener through carefully positioned front-facing stereo speakers. Add in a custom woofer and spatial audio support, and you get richer, room-filling sound designed for both music and voice clarity. The device is engineered around Amazon’s AZ3 Pro chip with an integrated AI accelerator, ensuring Alexa+ feels more responsive and capable in managing smart home tasks, answering questions, or handling multimedia requests.
With these refinements comes a slight increase in cost. The Echo Show 8 now carries a $179.99 price tag, up from its predecessor’s $149.99. Yet, when you factor in the better design, more immersive audio, and snappier Alexa+, the higher price feels justified for those looking to invest in a reliable centerpiece for their smart home setup.
But the real star of Amazon’s latest showcase may well be the entirely new Echo Show 11. With its 10.95-inch display, the Echo Show 11 enters the Full HD era thanks to its 1920 x 1200 resolution. This screen upgrade transforms the device into a genuine entertainment hub, suitable not just for glancing at weather forecasts or security camera feeds, but also for streaming video content in sharp detail. The design is modern, ditching the bulk that plagued the outgoing Echo Show 10. It is sleeker, more visually appealing, and better suited to act as the centerpiece of a kitchen, office, or living room.
Like its smaller sibling, the Echo Show 11 is built around the AZ3 Pro chip with AI acceleration, front-facing stereo speakers, and Omnisense technology. The spatial audio design and custom woofer promise room-filling sound that can rival standalone smart speakers. Meanwhile, the built-in smart home hub consolidates control over connected lights, locks, and thermostats, reducing the need for additional hubs or apps. The familiar 13MP camera with auto-framing also makes appearances here, making it ideal for video calls where you can freely move about without leaving the frame.
One of the key narratives around the Echo Show 11 is its positioning. With the older Echo Show 10 now quietly slipping out of Amazon’s lineup – it is marked as “currently unavailable” online – it seems clear that the Echo Show 11 is designed to be its direct replacement. For many consumers, this is welcome news: the Show 10 was powerful but awkwardly bulky, while the Show 11 balances larger screen size with a modern, streamlined look.
The Echo Show 11 lands at $219.99, a price point that feels fair considering the display upgrade and overall refinement. Both the Show 8 and Show 11 are scheduled to launch officially on November 12, with preorders already open. Unlike older models, which may see discounts during big shopping events like Prime Day, Amazon’s newest smart displays are unlikely to be discounted so soon after release. However, their blend of design improvements, upgraded hardware, and smarter Alexa+ experiences means they’re already positioned as strong value options without relying on temporary markdowns.
What does this mean for the competition? Apple, despite years of speculation, has yet to deliver its rumored HomePod with a touchscreen, leaving Amazon to continue running unopposed in this niche. Google’s Nest Hub remains popular but hasn’t received the same level of iterative design and hardware upgrades. For now, Amazon’s aggressive rollout ensures it holds onto the crown in the smart display space, offering users devices that double as entertainment centers, communication hubs, and smart home controllers – all wrapped into sleek, evolving designs.
In summary, the new Echo Show 8 delivers incremental but meaningful improvements, while the Echo Show 11 introduces a new sweet spot in Amazon’s lineup with its larger Full HD display and balanced aesthetics. Together, they highlight Amazon’s strategy of refining existing products while also pushing the envelope into new form factors. For anyone building a connected home, these two models are shaping up to be the most compelling smart displays on the market heading into 2025.
1 comment
that 13MP cam is solid for calls, nice they kept it