I Found the Best Smart Displays for My Home With 6 Simple Questions
When I'm not testing other smart display, I keep mine in the kitchen. With my open floor plan and the way I use the smart display, it just works better there than anywhere else. But I arrived at that decision after several important questions, and they may help you out, too.
Read more: 7 Ways You Aren't Using Your Smart Display (But Should Be)
What do you want to do with a smart display?
The Echo Show 5 makes an excellent video chat option for kids.
Amazon
Why are you interested in buying a smart display? Their capabilities keep growing as voice assistants are enhanced with AI, so let's start with a list of what you want to do with one:
Use a home voice assistant such as Alexa, Google Gemini or Siri
Video chat
Connect and control compatible smart home devices
View live camera feeds from connected smart cameras
Look up videos, recipes and photos for visual instructions
Connect to streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix to stream shows or sports
Play interactive games
Walk through visual education lessons
Look up visual guides, charts or walkthroughs
Stream game playthroughs from Twitch, YouTube, etc.
Shop online
Listen to music
Display photos like a digital photo frame
Once you determine what you need in a smart display, you'll also have a good idea where you want it -- as an alarm display in a bedroom, a quick way to communicate with a baby or pet, a sidekick device for your gaming setup, a kitchen helper or a whole-house controller.
Keep in mind, smart displays need to be plugged into an outlet so you'll need one nearby.
How big of a screen do you need?
Amazon's Echo Show 10 has one of the largest screens for videos.
Chris Monroe/CNET
Smart displays offer a nearly-overwhelming number of screen sizes. We've seen tiny smart display dial-like screens like the Echo Spot ($80) come and go, as well as standard rectangular screens both small and large. So let's make this step easy with three choices.
First, if you're going to be watching any type of video, from a recipe walkthrough to the latest episode of a Hulu show, you'll want a bigger screen. The best options are the Google Nest Hub Max ($230) and the Echo Show 10 ($250), which both have 10-inch touchscreens. These screen sizes are also best if you like tapping and swiping on the touchscreen to scan through search results and images.
Second, if you prefer a more background-friendly, quiet helper for a smart display, choose a small screen instead. The Echo Spot we mentioned serves as a fun little alarm clock, as can the Echo Show 5 ($90) with its 8-inch screen.
The Echo Show 8 ($150) and the 7-inch Google Nest Hub 2nd-Gen ($100) also can serve well as desktop companions or dutiful smart home control centers that get the job done without needing as much space as the largest models. They also make good photo displays.
What voice assistant and apps do you use?
Some smart displays are friendlier for smart homes than others but you'll want to think about what platform you use.
Chris Monroe/CNET
What voice assistant do you prefer to use? That will have a huge impact on your display choices. Echo Shows only work with Alexa, for example, and can only control smart home devices that support Alexa connections. Google Nest Hubs only work with Google Assistant/Gemini and Google Home smart home devices. And if you prefer Siri, it's probably worth waiting to see if Apple releases a smart display in 2025.
So, which home platform is best? There's no easy answer here, especially because voice assistants are in the throes of so many AI changes and we don't know how that's going to turn out in the end. Our best advice is to take a look at any smart home devices you currently use and see what voice assistants they are compatible with. Matter is making this easier, but it's a work in progress.
Finally, if you want an extra-big display focused entirely on your smart home, the Amazon Echo Show 15 is dedicated to the task.
Do you plan on listening to a lot of music?
The Nest Hub Max has a notable subwoofer for its size.
David Priest/CNET
What if you plan to focus many activities on the smart speaker qualities of your smart display? Then you'll want a model that can fill a room with sound. Currently, the best model for music and sound is the rounded Amazon Echo Show 10, which we've gotten the best results with when playing tunes. It can also connect to services like Spotify so you can often stream the platform you already use. However, the Google Nest Hub Max with its 30W subwoofer is also a serious contender.
Do you move around a lot in your space?
The Echo Show 10 is one of the only models that moves.
We've also seen smart displays that can move, notably swivel and angle as long as they have enough space. This feature was sold as a way to track people during voice chats but it also gives the display the ability to rest at a variety of angles and positions, which is useful if you move around a lot but want to keep consulting the screen (like working on a meal in the kitchen).
Some smart displays that move have been canceled, like the short-lived Facebook Portal Plus (ahh, the heydays before Meta). Currently, your best option here is the Amazon Echo Show 10, although its swiveling design is a bit awkward and can take up a lot more space than other displays.
How much do you want to spend?
Smart displays are easy ways to keep eyes on loved ones but make sure the device is worth the cost.
Google Nest
As you may have noticed, smart display prices typically start around $80 to $100 for the cheapest, smallest models. The largest versions cost up to $250. We suggest you budget at least $100 for a display and make sure you'll get your money's worth if you choose a larger display. If you have a computer tablet handy, you may want to set it up in the spot where you are considering a smart display, and see how often you use it for similar tasks to judge the ultimate value of a standalone device.
Final thoughts
The right smart display can be a great addition to your home. They add convenience by offering voice-controlled assistants that can perform a variety of tasks for you. Need a recipe for the best barbecue rub for your first summer cookout? With a smart display, it's as simple as asking a question. Some smart displays also enhance your home security by connecting with smart doorbells and smart cameras -- not to mention video chats, games and generally visualizing anything you want to know.
Choosing the right smart display isn't just about how you'll use it, but the size of screen you want, what voice assistant you prefer and where the smart display will be. Now that you know the details, you're ready to make a choice. For more info, check out our full guide to the best smart home devices, plus some important Alexa privacy changes.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
10 minutes ago
- CNBC
Last week's big winners and losers reveal where the stock market is headed
You can learn an awful lot by looking at the list of stocks that made new highs last week — and the list of stocks that hit new lows. Foremost, they can tell you what is and isn't working in this market, especially during earnings season. We saw many groups roll over and only one, the data center, really advance. The combination of Friday's weak employment number , more discriminatory tariffs , and President Donald Trump's anger, brought out sellers after a very long run up. The selling is real and it will take an end to speculative excess and endless tariff news to get us to restart, and I don't see it happening. I hear the usual geniuses talk about how dip-buying is as stupid as ever, even as though it has been fabulous since 1982. I see a landscape that wants to go lower, but I also see earnings that don't justify big declines, just a drift until something great happens. And I don't mean Fed Chair Jerome Powell quitting. Let's start — and end — with some cracks in the Magnificent Seven. The growth in Microsoft's Azure cloud business and the breakout of Meta's multiple revenue streams explain the incredible gains of those two Club names — gains strong enough that they both made the list of new highs. The perceived weakness of Amazon's 17% gain in web services versus the whopping 39% gain in the smaller but all-powerful Azure certainly helped. Amazon put up $30.9 billion in revenues in its AWS cloud unit. That's obviously a ton of business, but it was flat with the previous quarter and only equal to the estimates. Microsoft's cloud acceleration in the quarter was jaw-dropping. The staggering distance between Azure's triumphant growth and Amazon's perceived slowing led to a rally in Microsoft's stock and a sell-off in Amazon shares — losses which triggered immense soul-searching. Was Microsoft real? Or was it inflated by its partnership with OpenAI and its ChatGPT function, which reigns supreme? The burgeoning ChatGPT roster was a big reason why OpenAI was able to raise $8.3 billion this week at a $300 billion valuation. That little-noticed fact should have turned more heads, and that alone could explain some of this week's craziness. After all, design software company Figma only raised $1.2 billion in its initial public offering Thursday, a puny deal, but it still managed to capture everyone's attention. (More on that later.) There was lots of grousing about Microsoft benefitting from the surge in OpenAI business. Some experts liken the partnership to that of Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and predict it too will soon flame out, meaning that huge stream of Open AI revenue could go away. But the amount of fear instilled by AWS critics was behind the huge sell-off in Amazon . As I made my calls to sources Friday, I kept hearing that AWS, built to sell product, isn't built to help create new businesses based on AI. There is some truth here. AWS has fallen behind Microsoft in the cloud. I also believe that it doesn't have enough Nvidia product and has too much of its own chips, which are considered inferior by the fresh-faced AI developers even as it regarded as darned good for DevOps. Amazon is underspending its competitors. That's highly unusual and not good, and it's all that people cared about last week. I wish it didn't matter, but after this quarter Amazon's status as one of the greatest companies on Earth is now going to be considered suspect. The conference call was dispiriting, with CEO Andy Jassy giving a long and unnecessary soul-searching answer to Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak's question about Amazon falling behind in generative. A do-over on that question would help, but there are none. All of the great data about retail meant nothing. Sure, we own Meta and Microsoft, but the stock of Amazon now worries me, even though I would never count these guys out in a gunfight. My work says it will all sort out itself and Amazon will reaccelerate, if not this quarter then this year and those who sell will regret it. Amazon will get the Nvidia's next generation "Rubin" chips, and swallow the damned pride of making its own chips. We just want Amazon to be the fastest and the best. How the company hasn't bought AI start-up Anthropic is downright perplexing, to use the word of the day. Oracle , of course, is a state of the art, Rent The Runway style data center that is now loved, and its build out has been nothing short of amazing. Yes, it rankles me because we owned it and lost it on account of two misses on its way to greatness. GE Vernova and Constellation Energy show up on the highs list because all of the hyperscalers admit to being power-constrained, with Amazon emphasizing the need more than the others. Constellation has nuclear, Vernova has the more practical natural gas turbines, along with nuclear. They can keep going higher, even as the bears consider them meme stocks. They are most decidedly not. Caterpillar reports next week and it will be considered part data center, part reshoring and part Biden infrastructure. All of those themes work until someone decides they don't work well enough. Eaton is a better analogue. DoorDash and Roblox make the list because there are always a couple of companies that amaze and can't be denied. Doordash caught some upgrades. Roblox has accelerating revenue. Both are awful shorts. (Reddit will have a similar trajectory when it eventually gets added to the S & P 500.) S & P Global is a pure play on offerings, something that we can all agree to are about to heat up based on Circle and Figma. And Altria ? Its basic business repels managers even as it enthralls users. I want to break down and buy Altria, which happens to be the greatest stock of all time. No kidding. Even better than Nvidia because: 1) it has been around for 100 years; and 2) the power of compounding. Then there's Figma, the spawn of CoreWeave and Circle. It looks like those who embrace meme stocks and those who love the tightly controlled bitcoin have fallen in love with the IPO process and the lack of float. Coreweave, an almost busted deal, cut the size of its initial public offering (IPO) to $1.5 billion: 37.5 million shares at $40 per share, down from its previous plan of 49 million shares at $47–55 per share. It worked and the stock exploded higher. Figma also had heavy demand and light supply, as only $1.2 billion went to the company and the rest went to selling shareholders. Strange ratio there: 12.4 million shares raised by the company and 24 million shares raised by selling shareholders. I can't blame the bankers for low-balling Circle after Coreweave. But there was no excuse for the underpricing of Figma; even the gents putting up the signs in front of the New York Stock Exchange knew it would be a smash. Anyway, it's too bad because it devolved into rank speculation as the buyers, sensing there could be no more new shares trading for six months, decided to play bitcoin and generate an increase on the second day of trading that was childish. Palantir reports results on Monday, and I am expecting another home run, which will ignite even more speculation. Friday's losers were far more varied and deep. First, can we dispense with the idea that the employment number, as weak as it was, caused the sell-off? The classic recession stocks fared miserably: Procter & Gamble , Bristol Myers , Colgate , McCormick all landed on the new-low list. (Bristol was good, but without a hit in Cobenfy, its drug to treat schizophrenia , we will never make money in it.) These stocks would be on the list of new highs if a recession was the real story. Plus, with bonds soaring and yields plunging, you would think someone would want that P & G yield. You also would have thought that Baxter would be on the new highs list in a recession, but all I can say is have no idea what's happening there. But it isn't good. If you cut your dividend (as in the case of Dow ) or if the dividend is doubted (think UPS ), you end up on the list of new lows. Both of those stocks deserve that fate. Old Dominion is a legit recession story if you want to frame it that way. Carmax , too, except the incredible move in Carvana makes that reasoning suspect. The food group is just so bad: General Mills and Conagra pop up; the latter lives on this low list. Then there are a couple of oddballs. Accenture had been on a multiyear consulting tear. That's over. It didn't take long for Otis after myriad good quarters to land on this ignoble list. Two yesteryear faves, Chipotle and Lululemon , are a reminder that this market has little enthusiasm for high-multiple disappointments. Both need huge upside surprises to change their direction. I don't see any coming. And then there's UnitedHealth , the much beloved UnitedHealth. What a death rattle feel for that Dow stock. It's a wide and varied list for the new lows. But it's not the kind of list you get when people think there is a recession coming soon. Instead, it says there is considerable rot underneath that we might not have known otherwise when we look at all of the deals and IPOs and SPACs that are being priced. Although the latter spells trouble, too — way too speculative. So where do I come out? We just had a huge move that was decapitated by Trump's tariff sword once again. To me, it was a depressing week because the speculation emanating from Figma, the endless bitcoin derivatives, and the Palantirs and next Palantirs are signs that nothing good is about to happen. We need Figma and Ciricle to be crushed if we are going to go anywhere. We need the fascination with stocks as crypto champs to die down. We need a return to the financials as leaders and techs as consolidators. Yes, we need to see consolidation in tech (and many other industries) to get things back on track. There is no sign of a pulse at the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, so the time is right. Which leads me back to the Magnificent Seven and Apple . The quarter was good . Double-digit growth in revenue and earnings per share. Most encouraging: When I spoke to CEO Tim Cook, the need to put big deals on the radar screen was clear. The idea of something major in a finance vertical, now that the Goldman Sachs credit card deal is unraveling, is downright exciting. But the fact that this stock went down last week? Downright depressing. How bad? If it goes down big Monday, we're going to have to some major resetting of what works around here and it won't be good. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
Top Analysts Raise Amazon Stock (AMZN) Price Target Despite Pullback on Q2 Earnings
Amazon (AMZN) stock declined more than 8% on Friday despite the e-commerce and cloud computing giant's better-than-expected revenue and earnings for the second quarter. The selloff is being blamed on the subdued outlook and lofty expectations from Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division, which failed to impress to the extent rival Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure did with its June quarter performance. Ignoring the pullback, top Wall Street analysts remain bullish on Amazon stock, with many raising their price targets to reflect confidence in the company's prospects. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Top Analysts Remain Bullish on AMZN Stock Following the Q2 print, Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post increased the price target for Amazon stock to $272 from $265 and reiterated a Buy rating. The 5-star analyst noted the Q2 revenue and earnings beat. He added that while AWS growth accelerated 60 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 17.5% and was slightly above Street, it lacked a 'capacity-aided top-line beat' similar to Azure and Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Additionally, Post noted that AWS margins missed expectations, with over half of the 6.5 percent quarter-over-quarter decline attributed to stock-based compensation (SBC) and forex headwinds. It was also impacted by growing depreciation. On the positive side, Post highlighted that Q3 revenue guidance of $174 billion to $179.5 billion beat the Street's expectation of $173 billion, boosted by a solid Prime Day, with a profit outlook of $15.5 billion to $20.5 billion bracketing the consensus estimate of $19.4 billion. Likewise, Barclays analyst Ross Sandler raised the price target for AMZN stock to $275 from $240 and reaffirmed a Buy rating. The 5-star analyst stated that he suspected 'knives would come out on AWS,' given that rivals' June quarter revenue and backlogs accelerated on AI, and also due to the margin miss. That said, Sandler has not lost any faith and expects AI to add a couple of points by the fourth quarter on Anthropic and other applications built on Claude-4's API. Meanwhile, the analyst highlighted that Amazon's retail posted a strong quarter again, with efficiency reaching all-time highs. Finally, DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria increased the price target for Amazon stock to $265 from $230 and reiterated a Buy rating. The top-rated analyst stated that despite the accelerating revenue in Amazon's retail business and stabilizing growth in AWS, Q2 results were largely overshadowed by capex guidance that is expected to see infrastructure investments accelerate through the second half of the year. Nonetheless, Luria noted that management continues to reiterate that they're seeing an acceleration of customers' transition to the cloud, along with demand for compute still exceeding supply at AWS. Is Amazon Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Overall, Wall Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating on Amazon stock based on 44 Buys versus one Hold recommendation. The average AMZN stock price target of $265.05 indicates 23.4% upside potential from current levels.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Apple might be building its own AI ‘answer engine'
Apple has formed a new team to build a ChatGPT-like app, according to according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. This team — reportedly called Answers, Knowledge, and Information — is working to build an 'answer engine' that can respond to questions using information from across the web. This could be a standalone app or provide search capabilities in Siri, Safari, and other Apple products. Gurman also notes that Apple is advertising for jobs with this team, specifically looking for applicants who have experience with search algorithms and engine development. While Apple has already integrated ChatGPT into Siri, a more personalized, AI-powered update to the voice assistant has been repeatedly delayed. Apple might also have to alter its search deal with Google as a result of the latter company's antitrust defeat. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
