Amazon Echo Hub Review: A Robust, Easy-to-Use Smart Home Hub

At a look

Skilled’s Ranking

Execs

• Helps Wi-Fi, Matter, Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth LE Mesh, and Sidewalk
• Straightforward to arrange, customise, grasp, and use on an on a regular basis foundation
• Helps superior choices similar to Energy over Ethernet

Cons

• No Z-Wave help
• No battery backup possibility

Our Verdict

This can be a implausible good dwelling controller for hardcore good dwelling lovers with a number of gadgets to handle and management, but it surely is perhaps overkill for these simply dipping their toes into the water.

Worth When Reviewed

$179.99

Greatest Costs Right this moment: Amazon Echo Hub

$179.99

A touchscreen management panel that hangs on the wall is likely one of the commonest options of professionally put in good dwelling and residential safety methods. I’m speaking subscription providers similar to Vivint Good Dwelling and Alarm.com within the mainstream, and Control4, Crestron, and Savant on the excessive finish. Amazon has now delivered such a element to individuals who depend on Alexa to energy their good houses.

The Echo Hub is highly effective and extremely customizable; as such, it is going to be of most curiosity to hardcore Alexa customers. Whereas it’s very practical proper out of the field, you’ll need to spend some high quality time re-arranging its visible parts in no matter methods you discover most helpful. That is simple to perform in drag-and-drop trend—when you’re accustomed to how issues work, that’s—however the studying curve right here is in no way steep.

That stated, for those who’ve taken a willy-nilly strategy to including elements to your good dwelling—a occupational hazard for a product reviewer like me—you’ll need to first spend a while within the Alexa app to verify all of your gadgets are grouped simply the way in which you need, that they’re all assigned to the fitting “rooms” in your house, and that you just’ve eliminated any phantom gadgets you’re not utilizing. You’ll discover the Map View function in Amazon’s Alexa app to be very useful in that respect.

Design & Construct

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The Amazon Echo Hub appears to be like very very like an Echo Present 8, in that it has an 8-inch touchscreen show with 1280 x 800 decision, a front-mounted onboard microphone array that solutions to the Alexa wake phrase, and a pair of full-range audio system on the high. However the Echo Hub doesn’t have an onboard digicam, and it has a really completely different consumer interface from Echo good shows. It’s designed to both hold in your wall or, with an elective stand (£29.99/$29.99), relaxation on a countertop or desk. Three buttons are stacked on the right-hand aspect of the machine: mic-mute on the high, and volume-up and -down buttons beneath that.

Whereas in sleep mode, the panel will show your alternative of the images in your Amazon Pictures account, inventory images, or inventory artwork, all overlaid with the present date and a clock. An infrared proximity sensor within the high of its bezel rapidly wakes the panel from sleep mode as you strategy, displaying no matter parts you’ve chosen to show on its dwelling display screen. Extra on that in a bit.

The panel measures 5.4 x 7.9 inches (HxW) and is 0.6 inches deep (137mm x 202mm x 15mm). Weighing 12.9 ounces (365 grams), you should not have any hassle mounting it to a wall with the supplied bracket and anchor screws. The Echo Hub is obtainable in a single shade, Glacier White.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

As you’d count on, the Amazon Echo Hub is rather more than a sensible show, it’s a robust, full-fledged good dwelling hub with a MediaTek MT8169A processor and virtually each radio necessary to good dwelling dwellers: Bluetooth LE Mesh, Wi-Fi, Sidewalk, and Zigbee. It’s additionally Thread and Matter suitable.

There’s no Z-Wave radio right here, however you’ll be able to management most Z-Wave merchandise through a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Professional safety system you probably have one. That’s not a Z-Wave panacea, primarily since you should have a Ring system, but additionally since you’re restricted to enrolling Ring-certified Z-Wave gadgets (i.e., merchandise within the Works with Ring Gadgets program). That stated, each necessary product class is below that umbrella.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

You need to use the Echo Hub’s Bluetooth radio to stream music out of your cellular machine to the Hub’s onboard audio system, or you’ll be able to stream from the Hub to another Bluetooth speaker. The Audio/Video Distant Management Profile (AVRCP) is supported right here, so you should use voice instructions to regulate a linked Bluetooth speaker, however Arms-Free Profile (HFP) shouldn’t be supported, and you’ll’t pair Bluetooth audio system that require a PIN. I don’t take into account both of these two limitations to be demerits.

By default, the Echo Hub is powered by a 12.5-watt wall-wart adapter and a 6-foot USB-C cable, however you should use any various USB-C PD (Energy Supply) accent that helps each 5-volt/2.4-amp and 9-volt, 3-amp rankings. Extra apparently, the Echo Hub can even run on power-over-ethernet (PoE) with a suitable USB-C converter that helps IEEE 802.3at/PoE+/Type2 or IEEE 802.3bt /PoE++/Kind 3.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The PoE various is especially engaging as a result of it’s comparatively simple to run an ethernet cable out of your router or ethernet swap by means of your partitions to the panel (you’ll have to have a PoE-capable router or swap, after all, or a PoE energy injector). This may be significantly extra engaging than having an influence cable dangling from the underside of the panel. For a professionally put in look, you’d minimize a gap within the wall behind the panel and flush-mount {an electrical} field that’s giant sufficient to cover the cable and adpater. I believe Amazon included this function to draw skilled installers as a lot as hardcore smart-home lovers.

Setup

In the event you’ve arrange Echo gadgets up to now, the best method to arrange the Echo Hub is to search for a card in your Amazon Alexa app in your cellular machine instantly after the machine boots up. The cardboard provides you with the choices to attach the Hub to the identical Wi-Fi community you’ve used along with your different Echo gadgets and to routinely hyperlink the hub to your Amazon account. That is rather more handy than typing your SSID on the Hub’s display screen after which doing the identical to your Wi-Fi password, the e-mail tackle related along with your Amazon account, and the password linked to that account. However that’s what you’ll have to do within the unlikely occasion that is your first Echo machine.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The Echo Hub’s dwelling display screen consists of a customizable good dwelling dashboard populated with buttons for the Alexa-compatible gadgets you personal, the way during which you’ve grouped them, gadgets you’ve labeled as “favorites,” and the “rooms” in your house that you just’ve assigned them to. Gadgets in teams and in rooms will be managed individually or abruptly with button presses within the Hub’s consumer interface. within the Alexa app, or with voice instructions spoken to the Hub or to another Alexa-compatible good speaker or show.

A scrollable column of textual content hyperlinks on the left-hand aspect of the Hub’s show determines which consumer interface parts seem within the bigger space of the display screen on the right-hand aspect. The primary two objects on the checklist are in fastened positions: Dwelling (your customizable dwelling display screen), and Routines (the house automations you’ve beforehand arrange). A stacked checklist of particular person gadgets, teams, and rooms seems beneath these two objects, and this secondary checklist can be personalized. You may add or take away objects and rearrange the order during which they seem.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

The third and last factor of the house display screen is a row of buttons on the backside of the show. These buttons are linked to widgets that may carry out quite a lot of capabilities, similar to arming your Ring Alarm system, adjusting your good thermostat, and controlling any of your different Alexa-compatible good dwelling gadgets. Tapping one in every of them opens a widget within the space above the row, exposing extra controls usually.

Day-to-day use

As I stated earlier, you’ll make good use of the Echo Hub proper out of the field; in reality, utilizing it should doubtless inform you as to the way you need to customise it. Fortuitously, the Hub will be simply faraway from its wall mount. I say thankfully as a result of whereas Amazon didn’t design the Echo Hub to be a handheld machine, I discovered customizing it was simpler both in my hand or sitting flat on a desk or countertop.

I arrange the Echo Hub’s Dwelling display screen to show widgets with a block of thumbnail photographs from every of my three Ring cameras and one Ring doorbell, one other widget for the climate, a sticky-notes widget, my to-do checklist, and widgets for 2 of my most-frequently used rooms.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Faucet any digicam’s thumbnail and the show will fill with a stay feed from that digicam. That is tremendous once you need to see what’s happening in entrance of the digicam in actual time, however it could be rather more helpful if the Echo Hub additionally displayed a timeline marked with recorded clips; for that, you’ll have to depend on the digicam’s app. And whereas Amazon doesn’t restrict you to utilizing its personal safety cameras (i.e., Blink or Ring), you’ll see periodically up to date snapshots solely from Ring cameras—and solely you probably have a Ring subscription.

I organized a number of helpful buttons within the backside row of the house display screen, together with one labeled Local weather for controlling my Ecobee good thermostat, one labeled Locks for my good locks, and a Safety button that opens a widget for my Ring Alarm Professional system. You may faucet on icons in that widget to both arm your system in a state once you’ll stay in the home (solely home windows opening will set off the alarm) or once you’ll be leaving (opening doorways and a movement detection will set off the alarm).

In the event you’ve assigned good lights to a room, you’ll be able to flip all of the lights in that room on or off with a single button press, drag a slider to dim or brighten all of the lights concurrently, or contact buttons to show particular person lights on and off. It’s also possible to dim or brighten particular person lights, and you’ll change the colour and shade temperature of particular person lights (assuming they’re able to such modifications).

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

Michael Brown/Foundry

When you have an Amazon Echo Present in that room, you’ll be able to click on a button to “drop in” on it, initiating two-way audio and a video stream from the Echo Present’s digicam (the Echo Hub, you’ll recall, doesn’t have an onboard digicam). To make sure privateness, the Echo Present will sound a notification chime, and a inexperienced lightbar will present on its show throughout the drop-in.

Do you have to purchase an Amazon Echo Hub?

Priced at £169/$179, the Echo Hub gained’t be an affordable addition to your good dwelling, but it surely is likely one of the least-expensive Echos with each a show and a Zigbee radio (the Third-gen Echo Present 8 prices £149/$149, whereas the Third-gen Echo Present 10 sells for £239/$249). However nothing within the Echo Present product line was designed to be a full-featured good dwelling controller the way in which this machine is.

You should buy the Echo Hub from Amazon UK and Amazon US now.

As I stated earlier, the Echo Hub will probably be most tasty to hardcore good dwelling lovers who’ve settled on Alexa as their digital assistant of alternative and who’ve a number of gadgets to regulate. That goes double for individuals who’ve additionally invested in a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Professional system. This panel is rather more engaging—and extra helpful—than the numeric keypad that Ring offers for arming and disarming its system. The Hub’s PoE function is a pleasant contact, too.

I wouldn’t discourage less-experienced customers from shopping for an Echo Hub—it’s very simple to arrange and configure, and few folks will ever outgrow it—however its worth is extra restricted for individuals who don’t have a house filled with gadgets to regulate.

This evaluation initially appeared on TechHive.