Amazon Echo Show 5 | 3rd Generation

The Amazon Echo Show 5 has been one of the most affordable smart displays for some time now, offering Alexa voice control and a touch screen for under $100. The third-generation Echo Show 5 is largely unchanged from its predecessor, which itself wasn’t very different from the first model.

The new smart display is a bit larger; both Alexa and the touch-screen interface are smarter; and while it won’t wow anyone with its audio clarity, it can get quite loud for its size. The Echo Show 5 remains a good pick for anyone seeking a small, Alexa-powered smart display.

This third-gen smart display carries over the general shape and design of its predecessor, but it’s just slightly larger, at 3.2 by 5.8 by 3.6 inches (HWD) compared with 3.4 by 5.8 by 2.9 inches. It’s still a vaguely Toblerone-shaped device, with a triangular cross-section from the side and a trapezoidal one from above.

It features a 5.5-inch screen tilted slightly upward, and a body covered in black, white, or light blue fabric. The top edge holds volume up/down and mic mute buttons, as well as a mechanical switch that slides a physical cover in front of the camera. The rear surface has a connector for the included power adapter, but no other ports – While the 960-by-480-pixel LCD touch screen is identical to the previous Echo Show 5’s, a faster processor and a slightly larger speaker are tucked inside the display. It runs on MediaTek’s 8169 B chip, replacing the MediaTek 8163 that powered the last two models.

It also has Amazon’s updated AZ2 Neural Edge processor, first introduced on the Echo Show 15. According to Amazon, the AZ2 offers significantly improved voice-recognition and machine-learning performance compared with the original AZ processor.