I convinced myself we needed a family command center in the kitchen. A big display on the wall showing calendars, to-do lists, smart home controls, weather -- the digital equivalent of that organized family corkboard I've always admired in other people's homes. The Echo Show 15 seemed purpose-built for the role: a 15.6-inch display with Alexa baked in, Fire TV streaming, customizable widgets, and smart home dashboard capabilities. Six months later, I have a nuanced take. It's a technically capable device that struggles to justify its existence in a household where everyone already has a phone in their pocket. Our Echo Show 15 has gradually settled into life as a very expensive digital photo frame that occasionally streams a recipe video.
Design & Build
At 15.6 inches diagonal, the Echo Show 15 is substantial. It's closer in size to a small TV than a tablet, measuring roughly 15.8 x 9.9 inches -- think laptop screen without the keyboard. Amazon designed it for wall mounting in landscape or portrait orientation, but here's the first annoyance: the wall mount is sold separately for $30-40, and the countertop tilt stand is another $30. For a device that costs $280, requiring an additional purchase just to physically use it feels like nickel-and-diming. I went with the wall mount in our kitchen and the installation required finding a stud, drilling holes, and running a power cable down the wall. It took about an hour to get it looking clean.
The display itself is a 1080p Full HD panel that looks sharp at normal viewing distances. Colors are accurate enough for photos and video, though it won't match an iPad's display quality in direct comparison. The bezels are noticeable -- about three-quarters of an inch on each side -- giving the whole unit a slightly dated look compared to the near-bezelless screens we're used to on modern devices. The camera sits in a small bump along the top edge with a physical privacy shutter, which is a thoughtful inclusion for a device that's always watching your kitchen.
Build quality is entirely plastic, which is fine for a wall-mounted device you'll rarely handle, but it doesn't feel premium. The back panel is smooth white plastic that shows fingerprints from installation. At this price point, I expected something closer to the build quality of an iPad -- aluminum, glass, some sense of substance. Instead it feels like what it is: an Amazon device at an Amazon margin. Functionally it's acceptable. Aesthetically, it's a large plastic rectangle on your wall.
Features
The widget system is the Echo Show 15's core differentiator. You can arrange a home screen with widgets for shared family calendars, to-do lists, sticky notes, smart home device controls, weather, news headlines, and photo slideshow. In theory, one glance at the wall tells you everything your family needs to know for the day. In practice, the widget selection is more limited than you'd expect. Amazon's first-party widgets cover the basics, but third-party widget support is virtually nonexistent. You can't add a Todoist widget, or a Spotify widget, or widgets from most of the apps your family actually uses. You're locked into Amazon's ecosystem -- Alexa lists, Alexa reminders, Alexa calendar integration.
Fire TV integration turns the display into a streaming device for Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, and other services. The picture quality is acceptable for a kitchen TV -- you're not going to critique cinematography on a 15.6-inch 1080p screen. The dual speakers deliver passable audio for dialogue but lack bass and richness. For casual recipe videos or background TV while cooking, it's adequate. For any serious media consumption, you'd want to pair external speakers via Bluetooth, which somewhat defeats the purpose of an all-in-one device.
Smart home control is where the large display adds genuine value. Viewing camera feeds from devices like the Ring Video Doorbell on a 15.6-inch screen is substantially more useful than on a 5-inch Echo Show. I can see my front porch clearly from across the kitchen. Controlling lights, checking thermostat status, and viewing routines on the bigger interface is more comfortable than on smaller Echos. The device supports Matter and Thread, extending your smart home mesh and enabling control of Matter-compatible devices. Visual ID can recognize different family members by face and show personalized content -- we turned this off because it felt invasive, but the technology works.
The fundamental problem is that none of these features are individually compelling enough to justify dedicating wall space and $300+ to this device. The calendar widget? My wife checks her Google Calendar on her phone ten times more often than she glances at the wall. The to-do list? We use a shared app that syncs across our phones. Streaming? The living room TV is 20 feet away. The Echo Show 15 is a jack of all trades that gets outperformed by the devices already in your pocket.
Performance
Alexa voice responsiveness is good. The far-field microphones pick up commands from across our open-concept kitchen reliably, even when the exhaust fan is running. Voice recognition is quick, and the visual responses on the big screen -- showing a recipe, displaying a timer, pulling up a camera feed -- are the best argument for a large-format Echo. Having three simultaneous timers displayed on screen while cooking Thanksgiving dinner was genuinely useful in a way that audio-only timers on a regular Echo aren't.
The display is responsive to touch input, with smooth scrolling and quick transitions between widgets and apps. However, Fire TV performance is where the hardware shows its limitations. Switching between streaming apps takes 3-5 seconds with visible loading screens. Searching for content involves typing on an on-screen keyboard that's sluggish enough to be frustrating. The processor (Amazon's AZ2 Neural Edge) handles Alexa duties well but struggles with the demands of a full Fire TV interface. If you're used to an Apple TV or recent Roku, the lag is noticeable and annoying.
Speaker quality is the weakest performance area. For a device this size, the audio is underwhelming. The dual speakers produce thin, mid-range-heavy sound that's fine for Alexa responses and adequate for casual video watching, but poor for music. I tried using it as a kitchen speaker for Spotify and switched back to my Echo Studio within a day. You can pair Bluetooth speakers to compensate, but at that point you're adding complexity and cost to a device that was supposed to simplify your setup.
The ambient display mode -- showing photos, art, or clock faces when not actively in use -- works well and is honestly the feature I appreciate most. Using the Echo Show 15 as a digital photo frame that rotates through family photos from Amazon Photos is pleasant and something my family genuinely enjoys. It's just not a $300 feature.
Ease of Use
Initial setup follows the standard Echo process: plug it in, download the Alexa app on your phone, connect to WiFi, sign in with your Amazon account. The device walks you through widget customization during setup, which takes about 10 minutes of arranging and tweaking. If you're wall-mounting, the physical installation adds 30-60 minutes depending on your comfort with drilling into walls and managing cable routing. Amazon offers a professional installation service for $80+, which feels excessive for what amounts to mounting a screen and plugging it in.
Widget customization is intuitive once you understand the grid system. Press and hold on the home screen to enter edit mode, then drag, resize, and rearrange widgets. Adding new widgets is straightforward through the edit menu. The interface mirrors what you'd expect from a tablet home screen. Calendar integration requires linking your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar through the Alexa app, which works but sometimes has sync delays of 15-30 minutes for new events.
My wife was enthusiastic during the first month, checking the calendar widget and adding items to the shared to-do list by voice while cooking. By month three, she'd reverted entirely to her phone. "It's faster to just check my phone," she said, and she's right. The wall display is always slightly less convenient than the device you're already holding. Our kids (8 and 11) use it occasionally for recipe videos and to ask Alexa homework questions, but the novelty has worn thin. The ease of use isn't the problem -- the device is simple to operate. The problem is that it doesn't solve a problem that phones haven't already solved better.
Value
The Echo Show 15 retails at around $280. Add the wall mount ($30-40) or tilt stand ($30) and you're at $310-320 for a complete setup. During Amazon Prime Day sales, it sometimes drops to $180-200, which is a substantially easier price to justify.
Here's the value comparison that kept nagging me: for $300, you could buy a 10th-generation iPad ($349, or $250 refurbished) with a $20 stand and have a vastly more capable device. The iPad has a better screen, faster processor, supports thousands of apps, works as a HomeKit/Home Assistant dashboard, plays streaming content beautifully, and doubles as a functional tablet when you take it off the stand. Or you could buy an Echo Show 8 ($150) plus a Fire TV Stick 4K ($50) and get better smart display functionality plus superior streaming performance on your actual TV, with $100 left over.
The Echo Show 15's value proposition depends entirely on whether the "wall-mounted family dashboard" concept resonates with your household. For us, it didn't -- not because the technology failed, but because the use case is weaker than it sounds. If you specifically want a kitchen TV with Alexa built in and smart home dashboard capabilities on screen, and you catch it on sale under $200, the calculus improves. At full price, it's hard to recommend over the combination of a smaller Echo and a streaming device on your existing TV. The family command center dream is appealing in the store; in practice, everyone still reaches for their phone.
Pros
- Large display good for smart home dashboards
- Fire TV streaming built in
- Customizable widget system
- Good far-field microphones
Cons
- Expensive for what it does
- Mount and stand sold separately
- Mediocre speakers for the size
- Features don't justify the wall space
- Most families revert to phones anyway
- Fire TV performance is laggy
Final Grade
The Echo Show 15 is a solution searching for a problem. The concept of a wall-mounted family command center is appealing -- glance at the wall, see your calendar, check the front door camera, ask Alexa to start a timer. In practice, every member of my family has reverted to their phones for calendars, to-do lists, and quick information checks. What we're left with six months later is an admittedly pleasant digital photo frame that occasionally shows a camera feed and streams a recipe video. The hardware is competent: the display is sharp, Alexa works well, and the smart home dashboard view is the best in the Echo lineup. But the speakers are disappointing for the size, Fire TV performance is sluggish, and the widget ecosystem is too Amazon-centric. If you find it on sale under $200 and have a specific kitchen-TV use case, it's worth considering. At full price, the combination of a smaller Echo Show 8 and a good streaming device will serve most households better for less money.