So I bought this Echo Show 8 on a whim for my bedroom because I wanted a better sound for music in there than the Spot that I have now. Granted it's much bigger and there are no comparisons in virtually every area measurable. However, I was disappointed with two things.First, the depth of this unit seems excessive and it's definitely not best used on a nightstand. It just takes up a big footprint. I thought I had ample room but with a lamp, a coaster, and two charging pads for my phone and watch, I had virtually no more room to even put the TV remote down on the nightstand.Secondly, and most importantly, it only has two microphones on the top of the unit. Whereas the Echo and Echo Dot has four and seem much more sensitive when detecting my voice. The Echo Show 8 will sometimes barely pick up a command when the Echo Dot in the next room, which clearly has sonic superpowers, will reply back. I have two Echo Dots in my home, one Echo Show 5 and now this Echo Show 8. The Dots far out perform the Shows when it comes to sensitivity and average percent that they are correct in interpreting my request. They are all supposed to have far field technology where, as I understand it, two Echo products may hear a command but the closest one responds. This needs a lot of work. And I believe the answer is quite simply that the Dot has four microphones. Two more than the Shows. Which seems odd to me considering the vast difference in price.Now as far as the sound goes, it is really quite good for the money. After adjusting the equalizer in the settings to up the bass, mid and treble. You can also request these to be increased or decreased by simply commanding something like "Alexa, increase the mid" (or treble or bass). Each request increases the setting by one level. I believe there are five positive levels and give negative levels from the flat center.After tweaking the sound settings, Alexa does not sound hollow and music is full and fills a small to medium sized room. Bluetooth pairing from your phone is also simple and I like that I don't have to rely on the Alexa app to modify settings. The setup was super simple as expected. It's just a matter of logging in to your Amazon account with the touchscreen prompts. It guides you through everything you need to complete and customize your home screen/clock.Using personalized photos is a little clunky because you are forced to create an album using only Amazon photos instead of just uploading what's already on your phone's native photos app. That's actually a really big negative. Because of that, I don't have any personal photos on my Echo Show.If you don't follow what I'm saying, lemme give you an example: when you use Facebook, for instance, and you want to upload a photo, the app simply opens your phone's photos and you can randomly pick one or several photos to create your post. Here, you must download the heavy Amazon Photos app which just duplicates your already existing photo app. Then you must create a specific album of photos that you want to see on your Show. Then you must share it to the Show. I believe that changes to the album can only be done thru your phone with the exception of discontinuing use of that album all together and going back to the default Amazon screen saver photos, which you can do on the Show without your phone. But again, you cannot make changes and add or drop photos to the album you've shared without the Amazon Photos app on your phone.So here's the deeper issue. Since most Android phones are already bloated with endless and mostly useless Google apps, it really irks me that I must download another set of heavy apps to have Alexa simply turn off the lights or play some sleep sounds or to show simple photos of my family and friends on the Echo Show. I just don't like the fact that Google and Amazon can't get together on much of anything. Personally I prefer Google Photos over Amazon's but Alexa is hands down better than the Google Assistant and their related devices. If Amazon released their own phone, I'd buy it simply for ease of integration for my smart home devices and to avoid duplication that eats up valuable storage space. C'mon Amazon, forget the Samsung Galaxies of the world and introduce the Alexa Universe. Lol.My last complaint it that the Echo Show cannot surf the web like the Kindle Fire tablets or like any tablets, for that matter. Alexa decides what she chooses from the internet and from what sources. You can only choose in the settings whether you want her to use the Silk browser or the Firefox browser. But you cannot access the browser directly either by touchscreen or voice. For instance, let's say you want to know about the history of your hometown. You must ask Alexa to tell you about it. She almost always defaults to a Wikipedia article. You have no choice to open your towns own website or any other source. She does not even give you the option of links to open after her cursory relply because, again, you are not able to access a browser directly.So in a nutshell, I use this device now in my bathroom to see the news headlines, listen to music with lyrics displayed while I brush my teeth, and have Alexa turn the lights on and off in the bathroom. It really serves no profound purpose but admittedly looks kinda cool. I'm sure to keep the camera cover closed in the bathroom just in case there's some weirdo somewhere across the country who hacks Echo Show devices for his own show, if you know what I mean.I can see this being useful for someone who cooks and wants to see a recipe (that of course Alexa chooses) or for someone who may not like a smartphone to do visual calling with loved ones. And of course the sound is much better than the Dot or Spot. But really it serves no unique function that you phone cannot do sitting on a stand that costs $15 on Amazon. So I have it in my head to buy a couple Echo Plus devices and create a home stereo group on the Alexa App along with my Spot so I can have the visuals, still, but in a smaller package plus the nice, full sound in my bedroom. Ugh. What a rabbit hole I've fallen into with Amazon. Yet, once you turn everything over to Alexa, you can't go back. My fingers are crossed for my invitation for the Amazon Ring. Now that's a unique product that I can use and fills an untapped niche. Pick me Amazon! As if I need more Alexa devices. Haha.Updated 11/23/2020 - after an update to the device yesterday it appears the buffering issue has been resolved for all wyze devices with one exception being the wyze cam pan. otherwise for the first time in months the echo show is not constantly buffering the image. also a first, where before the wyze image on the show would time out after a few minutes and go back to the home screen. now it keeps showing the wyze cam vid feed until you change things. for those who would use this as a baby monitor this is a very good development.Updated 11/21/2020 - the biggest reason we purchased this was to use along with our various wyze cam devices. unfortunately as i found out only after the fact, there has been an ongoing buffering issue between the two devices now for several months. sometimes you can watch a live stream from a wyze cam just fine. however more often than not you can't as every two seconds the screen freezes and buffers.of all our wyze devices only the new wyze cam outdoor does not do this. for some reason that model does just fine viewing on the echo. but the v1, v2, pan units all buffer to the point it is unusable. i like the show for the most part but the reason for the purchase didn't pan out and nobody at either end has a solution to date.original review - we started out years ago with the first echo and since have several generations of dots, echo plus, show 5 and this the 8" show. as with its smaller cousin this unit works the same, does the same things.you can watch prime vids. you can use it as a clock. easy vid calls or even intercom within your home. you can manually block the camera if you don't want that aspect. if running a timer you'll not only hear it when its done but in the upper right corner of your home screen you'll see it counting down.if you ask it a question it'll not only give you an audible response but also pull up pertinent videos, information, etc. on screen for you to use. you can either tap on the screen or just stick to telling alexa what it is you want. you'll also get on screen weather, upcoming reminders, etc. fyi within the settings you can have it show you more or less depending on your personal preferences.settings can be accessed from the touch screen or using the alexa app. ours is set to auto dim. as evening approaches the screen dims and then when the lights are out it will go dark except for the on screen clock. you can however set it to go totally dark it comes down to your preferences.the audio quality is about on par with the echo plus. obviously not near the bass response but still a lot better than i had expected. it also has a 3.5mm audio jack at the rear which is nice to have.you can ask it to 'show' you just about anything. ask it what is an olde english bulldog and you'll get the audio response and imagery on screen. if you want more information just tap on one of those images or ask. we have both the show5 and this model. if you plan to watch vids frequently i definately would go with this size and not the smaller. related the screen resolution on this size is much better than the smaller show5.everything you need to get going is in the box. setup has somehow been made simpler than in other amazon devices. personally i do not see how they could have made getting started any easier. it really does walk you through each and every step with most of those being entirely automated.the two things i don't like about the device are listening and cam time out. as to the listening to begin with i had frequent issues getting it to hear what i say correctly. the speed and how i speak where the other units do just fine this one misses words, gets the wrong ones or just sits there silent requiring multiple tries to acknowledge it heard 'alexa.' i have no accent to speak of. my speech sounds much like that you get from tv newscasters if that makes sense in regards to no accent. so i do not understand why the microphones have such a hard time hearing me compared to the others? so now i've learned to slow down my speaking and enunciate words as clearly as i can. when i do that problems listening are rare.the only other gripe has to do with the main reason i purchased this, for our Wyze Cams. once the Wyze app is enabled you can just say for example, "alexa show me the front door." it loads and then you are streaming to your echo with both video and audio. the image looks great but the gripe comes down to the built in 'time-out.' the video stream will only hold for a few minutes then it reverts back to the home screen. i hope this fix this soon, it should just be a coding issue.overall having the additional abilities the other echo units do not have. the combination of both audible and visual information. it is just a great design and even with the mic's not picking up as well as our other devices i'd still purchase it again.all said i would recommend this to most but due to the microphones for some it could be problematic. at least when you say something you also can see what it heard you on screen. otherwise i'd say this is a really good device and if considering say a regular echo unit or even a dot i would seriously consider this or its smaller cousin the 5" model instead.