I had an echo show 8 for a while although it was the 2019 or 2020 release I think. My opinion of it is basically that the audio quality was way better than I expected. Easily fills up a room
Many many many times louder than an echo 5. And also has a web browser so unlike some of the nest smart displays you can use the internet for it for some reason if you need to. Maybe you want to watch a YouTube video and set up an ambient background or fireplace or something.
But the downside, and this is a pretty considerable one, is that you can’t really completely get rid of ads and so-called suggestions to use more Alexa features.
You can mitigate them by fiddling with the home settings and so on but ultimately the reason they can keep these things so cheap is it’s basically an advertising machine.
Another downside to the second gen one is they got rid of the 3.5.
So you could connect the echo show 8 to a larger speaker or something. But it didn’t have audio input so you couldn’t put your phone into it or make it a sound bar with no latency.
I didn’t get much use out of it just because I think audio input would have been more convenient. Being able to plug it directly into a TV or to plug your phone into it would have been more ideal. I didn’t need audio output too much since The device was already quite loud.
But for some reason companies just have to take away 3.5 jacks from everything. Even stuff like the surface pro no longer has a 3.5 jack. Sigh.
But anyways 45 bucks for this is pretty good 10% off if you’re a prime member that’s 40 bucks. If you don’t care about the 3.5 jack.
Even if you end up not liking it or whatever I was able to sell mine back for 30 bucks or something a few years later. It became redundant for me when I had a fire TV.
Just ordered this for my son yesterday - got today. Looks brand new - works perfectly