Amazon Echo Hub, 8” smart home control panel, Designed for Alexa+, Compatible with thousands of devices

Echo Hub + Ring Doorbell+ Amazon Basic Wall Switch = Satisfaction !! *** 6 mo. Update ***
This gizmo is the real deal and the cat’s pajamas!I purchased the Echo Hub ($130.00) for wall mounting in my kitchen, the basic hardwired Ring Doorbell ($49.00), a 24v wall transformer for the Ring ($14.00), and a Amazon Basic Smart Switch ($14.00) for my porch lights.Everything recognized each other seamlessly. I set up a “Routine” whereby whenever someone pushes the doorbell,it will automatically “anounce” the activity,(no additional “Chime” required), and bring the doorbell image up on the wall mounted Echo Hub for viewing and conversing and return to the Home Screen after 2 minutes of inactivity. The routine also activates the Amazon Basic Wall Switch to turn on the porch lights between the hours of 8pm and 6 am when the doorbell is pressed. This satisfies my needs for what I was seeking for in a video doorbell setup. The Hub also seamlessly connected to my 8 Lorex security camera system so i can also easily access the exterior perimeter of my home. It automatically recognized my Govee lights in my basement,all my other Alexa/ Echo devices in my home and has plenty more room for expansion. This Hub will easily satisfy 99% of people’s needs for utilizing “Smart” devices. Now that i see how easy it is, I’m just getting started in incorporating more devices into my home. Game changer for the masses in my opinion.***6 mo. Update***- Extremely satisfied with Hub; 6 months of daily use and works great. I can view the Ring doorbell perfectly and super easy interface with my 8 camera Lorex security camera setup.

Nice but Not Perfect – InWall Install is Difficult at Best
I generally really like the Echo Hub. As others have said, it’s not an Echo Show, but a smart home center that can pull your cameras, Ring Alarms, Ring keypads, lights, switches, and other smart devices into a nice wall-mounted panel that offers convenience apart from your phone. It’s meant to be set up, customized, and left alone. It’s not meant to watch TV or interact with like a Show. I have one for each floor of a three-story house and another in our primary bedroom. Three are powered by the 12-volt wire that was already in the wall from our old security system, and one is powered by splitting off the PoE of an already existing in-wall ethernet port in the adjacent room.The Black Friday sale made these much more palatable at just over $100 each and I made my own fast-charging power adapters for just under $6 each. This is my biggest complaint with the Echo Hub. They aren’t really PoE compliant or ready since they don’t have an ethernet port and they don’t just require a Power Delivery (PD) adapter like Amazon states. They require a PD3.0 or PD3.1 adapter that optionally supports Programmable Power Supply (PPS). After a couple of weeks of trial and error I made four power adapters from AITRIP PD65W Fast Charging Type-C USB modules that provided the proper PPS power. I added a REVODATA Gigabit PoE Splitter ($13 additional) to power one of them with 12-volts and 2-amps (24 watt) while maintaining the ethernet data port in the adjacent room. The Hubs look professionally installed since all the power connections are completely hidden in the wall.I also bought the Hubs for Thread and Matter support of window shades. Unfortunately, they didn’t play nicely with other Echo’s nearby, so I disconnected them. Thread connections are much more stable now. However, the shade motors will sometimes flash that they have disconnected. They usually reconnect but will occasionally become unresponsive and show as such in the Alexa app. Thread simply isn’t ready for primetime. At least I have new Hub border routers and a several Thread shades to test software update stability. I wish I could talk to a second-tier engineer instead of getting canned responses from Amazon. Oh well.I didn’t give 5-stars to the Echo Hub. There are more issues, mostly minor, than just the power and Thread issues.1. The interface is SLOW. It needs more horsepower to be more responsive!2. I think the Hubs looks pretty nice on the wall but could be more modern looking by being thinner and having smaller bezels.3. One of the four Hubs shipped with a faulty power adapter that gave a startup error as many others have mentioned.4. I find the brightness of the screen to be very difficult to precisely control. The Hub tries too hard to be “smart”. Why not allow the user to set the exact lowest and highest brightness settings?5. The proximity sensor works well, but I turned it off because the only option to allow the screen to toggle back to the main clock interface takes 10 minutes and can’t be adjusted. WTH? The Hubs are wall-mounted in the highest traffic areas to make them accessible, especially for disarming the Ring alarms. The clock and background images almost never show when proximity is turned on since someone is almost always passing by.