The Echo Show 8 can be a smart home controller by day and a digital clock and photo frame by night. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
If you have a New Year’s resolution to enhance your smart home, buying a smart display isn’t a bad way to kick things off. The Echo Show 5 is one of the most cost-effective ways to add a visual interface to control your devices, especially since it’s receiving a 50 percent discount that brings it down to $44.99 ($45 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That’s only $5 more than its all-time low. You can also get the larger Echo Show 8 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $84.99 ($65 off), which is also $5 more than its lowest price to date.
The Show 5 makes for a meaningful upgrade if you already own a dedicated Echo speaker. Although it only has a 5.5-inch screen, the Alexa-enabled smart display can still function as your primary smart home hub. You can use it to monitor and manage smart home devices, play and control music, make video calls with its 2-megapixel camera (with integrated privacy shutter), and even stream shows and movies. The small size makes it ideal as a bedside alarm clock or smart photo frame if you later upgrade to a bigger device.
Speaking of which, the Show 8 is what you want if you plan to make the display the centerpiece of your smart home. Not only does the bigger screen allow you to use up to four widgets concurrently, but it also supports Matter and Thread, and doubles as a Zigbee hub. These widely standardized protocols allow compatible smart home devices to work well with the smart display as if they were natively built to do so. Plus, the Show 8 has a more powerful speaker with a satisfying sound for impromptu jam sessions.
Read our Amazon Echo Show 8 review.
A few more deals to start the new year
You don’t need the holidays to justify a decorative lighting up. You can create fun scenes all year round with Govee’s LED Strip Light M1 Matter, which is on sale at Amazon in either a 6.56-foot strand for $35.99 ($24 off) or a 16.4-foot strand for $59.99 ($40 off), both with an on-page coupon. You can splice multiple of the smaller strips up to 16.4 feet, but the bigger strip offers greater versatility as you can cut it in segments of 6.56 feet or connect two for up to 32.8 feet of lighting. Once set up using your smart home platform of choice (Alexa, Google Home, etc.), you can create custom scenes and colors with 17 different effects, including one that responds to music playback.
Today only, you can get Hoto’s 35-in-1 Rotary Tool Kit for $46.99 ($53 off) at Best Buy. It has a wide variety of attachments for carving, polishing, sanding, grinding, etching, and more. The small stature makes it suitable for small-scale building projects or creating and refining custom products and gifts. It can get up to 25,000 RPM across five selectable speeds, and there’s a handy LED ring embedded in the head of the tool to help with visibility. Battery life lasts up to 50 minutes before it needs to be dropped on the included charging base.
Anker’s three-port 735 Charger (Nano II 65W) is available for its all-time low of $29.99 ($26 off) at Amazon and Anker (with promo code WS7DV21DBLJG). The two 65W USB-C Power Delivery ports on the travel-friendly charger can supply power for smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other devices at speeds that won’t make you rage. It has a third USB-A port for gadgets that still use the older connector, too, though it maxes out at just 22.5W.