The best smart displays take a smart speaker and add a touchscreen, greatly increasing what you can do with them. You can use them as a digital photo frame, look up recipes, control smart home devices, answer your video doorbell, and even watch shows from your favorite streaming services.
We've tested nearly every smart display since the first Amazon Echo Show came out in 2017, and it's no surprise that the company's latest Amazon Echo Show 8 is our favorite smart display. At 8 inches, it's big enough to view movies and pictures, but not so big that it'll dominate your kitchen counter, living room table, or wherever you decide to put it.
The quick list
Amazon's mid-range smart display has a much better design and a faster processor, as well as Alexa+ support. It's just the right size to clearly see from across the room but doesn't take up a bunch of space on your desk or counters. It also has upgraded cameras and speakers as well as Omnisense for smart home routines.
Not only is this great for Google Assistant, but it's a fantastic Chromecast device. It doesn't have a camera but can use built-in radar technology to track your sleep.
The Echo Show 5 condenses the smart display into a compact pill-shaped body that can fit almost anywhere. It costs a fraction of the price yet does virtually everything its big siblings can. The smaller speakers and screen are a great addition to areas like an office or bedroom.
While it's not great for music, the Echo Hub's highly customizable, always-on screen shows device status, live security camera feeds, and gadget controls as widgets so you can quickly manage your smart home from one place.
This small, round smart display is the perfect bedside companion, letting you set alarms and delivering weather and other information in a compact form.
The biggest smart display of them all has a massive 21-inch screen, can double as a Fire TV, is better for video calls and has some helpful smart home controls.
The best smart displays you can buy today
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Best overall
Amazon's fourth-generation mid-range smart display is faster than ever, thanks to a new processor, and features a snazzier design with thinner bezels and a more refined speaker housing. Along with the Echo Show 11, it's the first smart display of the Alexa+ era, giving you access to Amazon's AI-enhanced assistant, which is a major upgrade in and of itself.
While the resolution of the 4th-gen Echo Show 8 isn't much different from the previous generation, we did like its thinner bezels and found the screen great to look at — we just wish it had Fire TV capabilities, like the larger Echo Show 15 and 21.
Still, a new Omnisense sensor — which can detect when you're in the room — allowed us to create much more reactive smart home routines. And, thanks to Alexa+, those routines were far easier to make, as the assistant was better at sussing out exactly what we wanted to turn on, and when.
Similar to the previous model, this Echo Show 8 has a 13MP camera and digital pan-and-zoom, so it can keep you in the frame during video calls. However, the 4th-gen model lacks a physical camera shutter, a feature we wish Amazon hadn't scrapped in the name of design. (There's an electronic button instead.) We also wish that Amazon had included the optional swivel stand, which you have to purchase separately for $40.
We also loved the audio output of the Echo Show 8's speakers, which are a bit larger than that of the Echo Dot Max, and delivered more than enough oomph for our bedroom and kitchen.
As before, the Echo Show 8 also has built-in support for the Thread, Matter, and Zigbee wireless protocols, which makes it one of the best smart home hubs you can grab. However, it does not have an eero satellite, so you can't use it to extend your Wi-Fi network, as you can with some of Amazon's other smart speakers.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 8 (4th Gen) review.
Best with Google Assistant
The $99 Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) is a speaker for music, screen for the best Google Assistant commands, and a seamless Chromecast device. This is incredibly useful for handing off media from your phone or tablet which is a feature Alexa devices lack. And it’s the only smart display that tracks your sleep, too. When positioned on your nightstand, the upgraded Google Nest Hub uses its built-in Soli radar sensing chip to see how you're sleeping at night. It's a little creepy, but the contactless tracking abilities will let you forget it's there.
Soli's superpowers also enable air gestures, letting you pause and play YouTube videos or snooze an alarm using your hand. These gestures don't work all the time, but are useful when they do. As for sound, we’d consider it one of the best Google Home speakers in terms of audio quality, delivering a significant improvement over the first-generation Google Nest Hub. However, it lacks a camera, so it’s not the best smart speaker if you want to make video calls.
Read our full Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) review.
Best on a budget
The Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) is a compact smart display you can use to make calls and video chat, browse recipes, watch videos, check the feeds from your security camera, dim your lights and more. It costs a fraction of the price yet does virtually everything its big siblings can without lagging behind. The smaller speakers and screen won’t fill up larger spaces but these are a great addition to areas like an office or bedroom.
Due to its small size, it looks and feels a bit more like the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock than a full-sized smart display. It also isn’t much of an upgrade compared to the original. But if you find yourself smitten with the Echo Show 5’s adorably petite design, and like the idea of being able to ring up loved ones before you go to sleep, the smart display is worth considering. Not to mention, the Kids Edition is a strong sell, providing a stationary Amazon Fire tablet alternative that doesn’t need to be recharged all the time. Plus it comes with a warranty should an accident happen.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) review.
Best smart home controller
The Echo Hub’s 8-inch display has a sleek smart home dashboard that neatly spaces out all of your devices by type, room placement, and order of importance. Each gadget gets its own widget so you can adjust your smart thermostat on the fly, look at up to 4 security camera feeds simultaneously, or slide down your smart light brightness without hopping through menus. Its interface is highly customizable so you can add widgets or rearrange the layout unlike any other smart display we've tested.
Although its simplified home screen is free from the ad bloat that plagues Fire TVs and Echo Shows, the Echo Hub is still an Amazon device. You can use it to play music throughout your whole-home audio setup, watch your favorite TV shows, and pin reminders to its screen such as chores for your family members to get done for the day. It lacks a camera for making video calls however makes for a great intercom to drop in on your other Echo devices.
Read our full Amazon Echo Hub review.
Best smart alarm clock
Amazon’s Echo Spot is a smart speaker with a useful touchscreen. It ditches the cameras found on the Echo Show lineup of smart displays for full privacy but its smaller screen loses out on the ability to display videos. Instead, this basic LCD display can show the time, weather, and album cover art with large colorful icons.
You can also control smart home devices with a tap on the Spot's face. From turning on lights to adjusting the temperaure it's helpful to control your smart home from bed without using your voice. The Spot's Ultrasound Motion Detection can sense when you enter or leave a room so you can use it in occupancy-based routines. For example, it can turn on your lights for you when you enter your bedroom or adjust the temperature when you leave it.
Read our full Echo Spot review.
Best big-screen display
If you were looking for a small TV to add to your kitchen, it might be a good idea to consider the Amazon Echo Show 21. This big smart display doubles as a Fire TV — and even comes with an Alexa Voice Remote so you can more easily find your favorite shows.
We wish its resolution were higher than 1080p, but as a secondary TV, it's still passable. But, what really impressed us was the audio quality, thanks to its dual woofers and tweeters — it's a huge improvement over the original Echo Show 15.
We also liked that Amazon upgraded the camera in the Echo Show 21, not only to a higher resolution, but by also adding subject tracking capabilities. This let us move around our kitchen, but still remain in the frame while we were video chatting with our friends.
It also helped that Amazon upgraded the Echo Show's networking capabilities: now, with Wi-Fi 6e, our calls were a lot smoother. And, the Echo Show 21 has Matter and Thread built in, making it an even better smart home hub.
We just wish that the company would spend more time making new widgets for the display — it's one of the defining features of this device, but there haven't been any new ones since the original Echo Show 15 came out.
If you're looking for something a little smaller and cheaper, Amazon also upgraded the Echo Show 15 with Wi-Fi 6e and better speakers and camera; it costs $100 less than the Echo Show 21.
Read our full Echo Show 21 review.
Also tested
How to choose the best smart display for you
The best smart display for you depends on your needs. Do you want a kitchen assistant that can walk you step-by-step through recipes, or something that replaces your alarm clock? Are you searching for a display to keep your family organized, or do you just want a way to start video calls using your voice?
If you want a “starter” smart display, one of the more affordable options like the Google Nest Hub or Echo Show 8 are best. They’re usually easy to set up, and come with all the skills you need to stay entertained and connected. Mountable smart displays are more permanent, while the Echo Show 10 and Nest Hub Max options are pricey, so you’ll want to know you have a use for smart displays before making a large investment or putting nails in your wall.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Apple have a smart display?
Not at this time; the only Apple smart speakers are the HomePod and the HomePod mini. However, rumors say that Apple is developing its own smart display, which might be available sometime in the next two years.
How we test the best smart displays
We rate the best smart displays based on ease of setup, performance, voice assistant features, speaker quality and value. When the smart displays have a camera for video calls, we review the camera quality. We see how well each display’s auto-framing abilities work as well.
Keeping our smart home guide in mind, we also consider how the best smart displays fit in with the rest of the smart home devices you might own. Amazon Echo Show smart displays play particularly nice with Ring video doorbells, since Amazon owns Ring. The same can be said for Nest doorbells and Nest Hub displays.
