I purchase one of these back in 2020 or so near the start of the pandemic.
I was pleasantly surprised at the performance as a speaker. It was quite loud for its size and could easily fill a small room. Sometimes I use it to practice guitar and it was plenty loud enough for me to do that and still here the speaker over the music.
If I had a complaint it would be more with the smart assistant. Amazon seems to be increasingly imposing advertisements into daily requests. So I might ask to set an alarm and then it " by the way do you know I can help you follow your favorite artists."
So I think I spent 80 bucks for it when I was on sale and I ended up selling it back to Amazon in the trade-in for 35 2 years later. Definitely got my 45 bucks worth.
One thing that made it easier to get away with trading it in is that I have a Fire TV cube so that has all the same assistant functionality and a much bigger screen to respond with the visual information like a shopping list if it helps.
But I think if you were just looking for a decent sounding speaker, something that has a 3.5 mm jack, can be used via Bluetooth.
It was even useful for some things I never would have anticipated like taking it out on my back porch to do exercise videos too on a nice day.
The first echo show in my experience didn’t sound is good and was a little more laggy but I did have front facing speakers in a bigger screen.
I traded in my 1st gen Echo show and got 30 bucks and a 25% off on the Show 8 and got it yesterday for end price of under $30. Nice upgrade of screen. Why can’t they have them delivered with updates? My hotspot took most of the afternoon to do the upgrades:( The first one they sent was looping the setup so back it went.
I wouldn’t bother with a refurbished one. Spend the extra $$ for a new one. I purchased a refurbished show 8 and couldn’t get past wifi setup. My router showed it was connected, but it kept saying it couldn’t connect. Customer service kept looping me but resetting the show and my router several times until they gave up.