Modern Dad on the Amazon Echo Show

While we await the HomePod later this year, Amazon one-ups everyone with a not-quite-baked but full-of-potential speaker/display combo.

Apple is diving a little deeper into the connected home space later this year with HomePod. (To live alongside that other semi-hobby, Apple TV, which can serve as a HomeKit hub.) We've still got a few months to go before it's actually available, though, and that's plenty of time for competitors to continue to roll out more devices of their own.

One of the more recent entries comes from Amazon with the Echo Show. It's basically what you'd get if you took the original Amazon Echo and stuck a 7-inch display on it. It's definitely a different design aesthetic than HomePod, and the addition of a display definitely opens up a whole new paradigm for the connected home. The problem is Amazon isn't really taking advantage of that fact yet.

But what it does have is a product that's available today — and more than $100 less expensive than HomePod will be when it's out in December. Another example of "good enough right now" versus "really good from Apple later?" Guess we'll know by Christmas.

For now, you can read the full review here.

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