Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Edit - 11/26/2018 Updated review after approximately six weeks of ownership with daily usage. I had the first generation of this product and received this the day it was released. I've used four of these Echo Shows daily. I don't want to repeat the other great reviews on here so will try to add extra seven extra pieces information that may be helpful to you. 1) I wish Amazon and Google would band together and get over their silent feud. I'm a huge fan of both companies (sorry Apple), but their products don't work well together. After Amazon removed YouTube from the first generation product, I was more than upset. Well, now you can get YouTube here via a workaround method. You can use either Amazon's Silk Browser of the Firefox Browser on this device. Neither works exceptionally well and I've found that Firefox works a little better, faster and with fewer hiccups. So, you can get YouTube - just not on the YouTube native application. It's not as good and linking your Google user account to the device and is much more difficult to do. 2) It's difficult to get a Google-branded doorbell, the Nest thermostat or the Google camera to work with this device. There are workarounds (many listed with a simple web search) that take a lot of time and technical knowledge to set-up, but everything seems like a workaround and isn't easy. Amazon wants you to purchase their Ring doorbell, another thermostat brand (EcoBee), and Amazon-branded cameras. This is very frustrating, to say the least. I beta test Google Products and it's the same thing there. Their new Google Home Hub doesn't support Amazon products well, but that's a different review for a different platform Again, these two behemoth awesome companies need to come to terms and support each other's ecosystems. I know it's a competitive "thing" that is supposed to benefit the shareholder via an increased profit margin. However, as the consumer, this is a sore huge spot for me and I assume others? 3) I've used the drop-in feature from the Amazon Application on my phone to this device. It's slow; painfully slow to connect and subsequently come into focus. Moreover, the camera on this device shoots up the ceiling so you can't really see the entire room you've "dropped-into" well. In order to see someone, they have to be directly in front of the device. Perhaps these are meant to be security/privacy features or are these just half-baked implementations? 4) I like that you can now issue a follow-up command to Alexa. That is, you can program the device to listen to your request without saying the wake word "Alexa" again. 5) The user interface seems rudimentary. - almost like a pre-schooler designed it. Sure the screen is larger, but simply displaying the weather, a clock or sports scores on a cartoonish-like background isn't enough. I'd really like to see my Google doorbell and cameras as a default dashboard here without purchasing the Google Home Hub. My hopes are this changes with future software updates. Amazon: you employ some of the smartest talent in the world so please upgrade this simplistic screen interface. It looks silly and very much like a Palm Pilot interface on the early 2000s. 6) Why oh why does Amazon Prime only display the last 60 shows in your library here? You need to use the phone/tablet/computer application to see your entire library. Amazon Prime shows are another fantastic thing about an Amazon membership, so why limit the ability to see a users' inventory? Also, the volume on Prime video is much softer than when playing Amazon Prime music. 7) If you care about someone seeing your personal pictures, you can restrict access to your Amazon picture library, That is, you can disable the picture feature on the settings menu via a toggle switch, the picture library comes "ON" by default. So....if you have any compromising/private pictures uploaded from your phone automatically to the Amazon Cloud, you may not want them to display on your Echo device. All-in-all, this is an incremental improvement over the original product with the best feature being the larger screen size. The speaker sound is OK, but not fantastic as a few other reviews note and the sound is lower when using Amazon Prime video. I'd like to see a better and more modern user interface and better ability to integrate with Google products.