HomeView vs Echo Show: how the two smart home hubs compare

• A newcomer to the arena

  

  Apple HomeView

  Chipset

  A18

  Display

  7-inch Liquid Retina LCD

  RAM

  8GB

  Colors

  Silver, Starlight, Rose Pink, Space Gray

  Connectivity

  Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6.0, Thread, Matter

  Price

  $300

  The HomeView is Apple's all-new smart home hub with a 7-inch Liquid Retina touchscreen, built-in Siri AI features, and the A18 chipset with 8GB of RAM.

  $300 at Apple

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• A tried-and-true classic

  

  Amazon Echo Show 8 (4th generation)

  Chipset

  AZ3 Pro

  Display

  8.7-inch LCD

  RAM

  4GB

  Storage

  16GB eMMC flash storage

  Colors

  Graphite, Glacier White

  Connectivity

  Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, Zigbee, Thread, Matter

  The Echo Show 8 is a 4th-gen smart home hub from Amazon that features an 8.7-inch touch display, an AZ3 Pro processor, and native support for Alexa+.

  $180 at Amazon

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Apple has just unveiled the HomeView -- its first stab at a dedicated home hub display. On first impression, the device looks rather compelling, with its snazzy industrial design, its various hooks into the Apple ecosystem, and its native support for Siri AI.

Of course, the HomeView isn't a novel product concept. Smart home hubs have been around for several years, with the likes of Amazon and Google owning much of the market with their Echo and Nest devices, respectively.

Here's a breakdown of how Apple's newfangled HomeView compares specifically with Amazon's latest equivalent offering, the Echo Show 8 (fourth generation).

Price, specs, and availability

Disparate value propositions

• 	Apple HomeView	Amazon Echo Show 8 (4th generation)
  Chipset	A18	AZ3 Pro
  Display	7-inch Liquid Retina LCD	8.7-inch LCD
  RAM	8GB	4GB
  Colors	Silver, Starlight, Rose Pink, Space Gray	Graphite, Glacier White
  Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6.0, Thread, Matter	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, Zigbee, Thread, Matter
  Price	$300	$180
  Camera	12-megapixel Center Stage front-facing camera	13-megapixel front-facing camera

The Apple HomeView appears to be well-rounded in the specs department. The smart home hub features the A18 chipset, which also powers the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Plus, and the iPhone 16e. It features 8GB of onboard memory (RAM), a 12-megapixel Center Stage front-facing camera, and Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6.0, Thread, and Matter connectivity.

By contrast, the latest-generation Amazon Echo Show 8 features the AZ3 Pro processor, 4GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel front-facing camera, and Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter compatibility. These latter chip and RAM specs don't quite match up to the HomeView, but that's to be expected at a more affordable price tag of $180 (versus the HomeView's $300 cost).

Apple's HomeView is available now for pre-order, with a launch date of November 13.

The HomeView is available in silver, starlight, rose pink, and space grey, though only silver and space grey are on offer for the wall-mounted version of the device (which, interestingly, costs the same $300 as the non-wall-mounted variant). The Echo Show 8, meanwhile, can be had in either graphite or glacier white.

Apple's HomeView is available now for pre-order, with a launch date of November 13. By contrast, the fourth-generation Echo Show 8 released to the public on November 12 of last year. In other words, Amazon's current home hub is a generation behind, and it's unclear when the company will next refresh the device in an official capacity.

Design and build

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

As Pocket-lint Associate Editor Craig Donaldson puts it, Apple's HomeView looks like a massively scaled-up Apple Watch. The device's display is shaped like a square, with rounded, uniform display bezels flanking the touchscreen. The base has a metallic sheen to it, with a large grille adding a pop of character to its design.

The Amazon Echo Show 8, meanwhile, is shaped more like a traditional tablet, meaning that its screen is configured in a landscape orientation. Like the HomeView, the Echo Show 8 features slim, uniform bezels with rounded edges for a refined physical appearance. The tablet section lifts off the ground with a base similar to the HomeView, but with more of a fabric mesh look to it.

Display

Square or rectangle: take your pick

Putting aside the obvious fact that one device features a square display and the other features a rectangular display, both models are similar in that they use LCD technology, and both support multitouch with their capacitive touchscreens. The HomeView's panel is 7-inches diagonal, with a 1,088 x 1,088 pixel resolution, while the Echo Show's screen is 8.7-inches at 1,340 x 800 pixels.

Internals

Running the show under-the-hood

Apple's A18 chip may not be the company's latest-and-greatest bit of silicon, but it's still an overall powerhouse. With 8GB of ram to boot, there's plenty of horsepower under-the-hood to power the HomeView. For its Echo Show 8, Amazon opted for an in-house AZ3 Pro processor and 4GB of RAM, which likewise features on-device AI processing. There's less RAM here when compared to the HomeView, which may impact longevity, but the AZ3 Pro itself is no slouch in the smart home computational department.

Siri AI vs Alexa+

Battle of the AI-powered voice assistants

Apple's HomeView and Amazon's Echo Show 8 come standard with Siri AI and Alexa+, respectively. Both AI chatbots are powered by large language models (LLMs) under the hood for more advanced input capabilities, and both can be used hands free in a variety of scenarios.

It's still too early to tell just how capable Siri AI will be on the HomeView, but I have high hopes that it'll prove to be a useful artificial intelligence system on the whole. Alexa+, which is an upgrade over the traditional Alexa featured in older Amazon Echo products, has proven solid in testing, albeit while still being a work in progress.

Verdict: How do the two smart displays stack up to one another?

Two different takes on the smart home hub concept

Both the HomeView and the Echo Show 8 are solid home hub devices that pull together the best of their respective brand's software, hardware, and artifical intelligence prowess. Apple's HomeView appears to take the cake when it comes to physical design with its metal base construction, but the Echo Show 8 comes swinging back with its larger, widescreen display panel.

Whether one home hub is better than the other will largely depend on your technology ecosystem footprint. That is to say, if you're deep in the Apple ecosystem, the HomeView will integrate more seamlessly into your life, and, likewise, Amazon's Echo Show will prove ideal for Amazon aficionados.

At the end of the day, I reckon you can't go wrong with either smart home product. With additional RAM and a more powerful processor, I expect the HomeView to outlast the Echo Show long-term, but it's worth keeping in mind that the Echo Show is a fair bit more affordable (and therefore more approachable) on the whole.