The best smart displays add a useful touchscreen to the smart speaker experience. Place one of these displays in any room to fill it with rich sound for listening to your music and a screen for interacting with apps or watching shows. This added tablet-like functionality is incredibly helpful in day-to-day tasks as it can pull up visuals to accompany your voice commands or relevant information on the fly.
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Smart displays are versatile and can act as anything from a smart home controller to an entertainment hub. You can even have the hub serve as a smart photo frame when you aren't using it. Many people use them in the kitchen to view step-by-step recipes or watch TV while they cook. Or you can add a smart display to your living room to control the best smart home devices and monitor security camera feeds. And with the built-in camera privacy shutters you can comfortably place one on your bedside to act as an alarm clock that doubles as a smart home device dashboard.
Unlike some of the best smart speakers that work with both Alexa and Google Assistant, all the top smart displays only work with a single assistant. The Echo Show smart display experience is powered by Amazon Alexa, while Nest Hub devices run Google Assistant. Still, there are plenty of options on the market to choose from. Read on to see all the best smart displays we’ve tested complete with reviews below.
The quick list
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Best overall
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Amazon's mid-range smart display blends speedy performance with premium features. Although the screen isn’t as large as the Echo Show 10 ($249, Amazon) this model packs an equally sharp 13 MP camera and upgraded Alexa experience for half the price. Its compact design makes it more counter-friendly than previous versions, and the edge-to-edge glass display squeezes the most out of the 8-inches of screen real estate. Even if you already know how to use Alexa, you’ll still find something new here with the addition of home screen widgets and an independent Fire TV experience previously locked to the flagship Echo Show 15.
In our review, we noted that the new Echo Show 8 delivers visuals and audio far better than its $149 price would suggest. A brand new processor improves the new Echo Show 8's response time by up to 40 percent. That means local smart home requests like asking Alexa to turn on a smart light or lock your door take place much faster. Meanwhile, the addition of upgraded Zigbee, Thread, and Matter wireless protocols elevates to one of the best smart home hubs you can grab. While the display can't physically rotate to keep you in the frame like the Echo Show 10, the newly centered wide-angle lens digitally focuses on you much like the Google Nest Hub Max and Apple’s Center Stage feature.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen) review.
Best for Google Home
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The $99 Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) is a speaker for music, screen for the best Google Assistant commands, and a seamless Chromecast device. This is incredibly useful for handing off media from your phone or tablet which is a feature Alexa devices lack. And it’s the only smart display that tracks your sleep, too. When positioned on your nightstand, the upgraded Google Nest Hub uses its built-in Soli radar sensing chip to see how you're sleeping at night. It's a little creepy, but the contactless tracking abilities will let you forget it's there.
Soli's superpowers also enable air gestures, letting you pause and play YouTube videos or snooze an alarm using your hand. These gestures don't work all the time, but are useful when they do. As for sound, we’d consider it one of the best Google Home speakers in terms of audio quality, delivering a significant improvement over the first-generation Google Nest Hub. However, it lacks a camera, so it’s not the best smart speaker if you want to make video calls.
Read our full Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) review.
Best smart home controller
(Image credit: Future)
Best smart home control panel for Alexa users
Our expert review:
Dimensions:
7.9 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
Display size:
8” touchscreen (1280 x 800)
Smart Home Device Compatibility:
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter
Processor:
MediaTek MT 8169 A
Audio:
Dual speakers w/ stereo playback
View at AmazonView at DellView at Best Buy+
Clear, customizable interface
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Great for Ring customers
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Intuitive controls
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Built-in smart home hub
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Mediocre speakers
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Chunky body
The Echo Hub’s 8-inch display has a sleek smart home dashboard that neatly spaces out all of your devices by type, room placement, and order of importance. Each device has its own widget so you can adjust your smart thermostat on the fly, look at up to 6 security camera feeds simultaneously, or slide down your smart light brightness without hopping through menus. Its interface is highly customizable so you can add widgets or rearrange the layout unlike any other smart display we've tested.
Although its simplified interface is free from the ad bloat that plagues Fire TVs and Echo Shows, the Echo Hub is still an Amazon device. You can use it to play music throughout your whole-home audio setup, watch your favorite TV shows, and pin reminders to its screen such as chores for your family members to get done for the day. It lacks a camera for making video calls however makes for a great intercom to drop in on your other Echo devices.
Read our full Amazon Echo Hub review.
Best for Alexa
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The Echo Show’s 10-inch display is the best smart speaker for taking advantage of the best Alexa skills. This display is the same size and resolution (1280 x 800) as previous models, but the Echo Show 10 has a special trait: the screen rotates so that you’re always the center of its attention. It also has a digital pan-and zoom; this way when you know how to make a video call using the Echo Show, the 13MP camera will keep you in frame as you’re bouncing around the kitchen or managing multiple people in a single household.
Our experience felt more intuitive than we expected. Its camera is not actively following you all the time — just when you use your assistant's wake word. The large display also acts as a hub for your collection of smart home devices, so you can control them easily on a single interface. While you might think the larger Echo Show 15 would be superior, it lets sound quality fall by the wayside and produces a more stretched-out image. This makes the Echo Show 10 the premiere choice for the best media and video call experience on an Alexa smart display.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 10 (3rd gen) review.
Best audio performance
(Image credit: Future)
The Google Nest Hub Max is not just one of the best smart displays but it’s also a great-sounding smart speaker — it has two 18-millimeter, 10-watt tweeters, and one 75-millimeter, 30-watt woofer that delivers layers of rich sound. When it comes to the display, you can use touch controls or go hands-free with voice commands to follow step-by-step recipes, control your smart home devices, and get a glimpse at how long your commute will be each morning. You can even watch Netflix on the Google Nest Hub Max.
The Nest Hub Max’s 6.5 MP camera makes crisp video calls, with a clever motion-tracking feature that will keep you in the center of the frame as you move about a room. It's a game-changer when you're in the kitchen prepping food, and can't stay still in front of the display. And everything feels a bit more seamless thanks to its more powerful hexacore processor. We wish the camera had a physical privacy switch like the mechanism on the Echo Show displays, though.
Read our full Google Nest Hub Max review.
Best on a budget
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The Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) is a compact smart display you can use to make calls and video chat, browse recipes, watch videos, check the feeds from your security camera, dim your lights and more. It costs a fraction of the price yet does virtually everything its big siblings can without lagging behind. The smaller speakers and screen won’t fill up larger spaces but these are a great addition to areas like an office or bedroom.
Due to its small size, it looks and feels a bit more like the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock than a full-sized smart display. It also isn’t much of an upgrade compared to the original. But if you find yourself smitten with the Echo Show 5’s adorably petite design, and like the idea of being able to ring up loved ones before you go to sleep, the smart display is worth considering. Not to mention, the Kids Edition is a strong sell, providing a stationary Amazon Fire tablet alternative that doesn’t need to be recharged all the time. Plus it comes with a warranty should an accident happen.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) review.
Best wall display
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The $249 Amazon Echo Show 15 is the best smart display designed to be mounted on your wall. Unlike the other Echo Show devices, this model acts more like a smart home control center than a speaker, prioritizing screen size and interface over audio and video quality.
When placed in a high-traffic area in your home, the Echo Show 15 provides a digital destination for family members to interact, leave notes for each other, and more. Each individual in your household can set up their own profile with a visual ID, so when they walk by, they’ll see customized communication options and information relevant to their day. This smart display also introduces widgets like sticky notes, to-do lists, and dedicated smart home controls, letting you open a feed from your Ring doorbell easily, for example.
It also lacks the more advanced camera tracking found in the Echo Show 10, and its speakers are on the weak side. However, the Echo Show 15 got a big upgrade, and is now a full-fledged Fire TV device, which works great.
Read our full Amazon Echo Show 15 review.
How to choose the best smart display for you
The best smart display for you depends on your needs. Do you want a kitchen assistant that can walk you step-by-step through recipes, or something that replaces your alarm clock? Are you searching for a display to keep your family organized, or do you just want a way to start video calls using your voice?
If you want a “starter” smart display, one of the more affordable options like the Google Nest Hub or Echo Show 8 are best. They’re usually easy to set up, and come with all the skills you need to stay entertained and connected. Mountable smart displays are more permanent, while the Echo Show 10 and Nest Hub Max options are pricey, so you’ll want to know you have a use for smart displays before making a large investment or putting nails in your wall.
How we test the best smart displays
We rate the best smart displays based on ease of setup, performance, voice assistant features, speaker quality and value. When the smart displays have a camera for video calls, we review the camera quality. We see how well each display’s auto-framing abilities work as well.
Keeping our smart home guide in mind, we also consider how the best smart displays fit in with the rest of the smart home devices you might own. Amazon Echo Show smart displays play particularly nice with Ring video doorbells, since Amazon owns Ring. The same can be said for Nest doorbells and Nest Hub displays.
At present, there are numerous types of the displays accessible from our smart phones to laptops to tablets there are different LCD displays used to enhance the user experience.
With the progression in the technology, the touch screen displays are more widespread in the world today. They are becoming a requirement and the demand for the high-end displays is ever increasing in the market.
The touch screen technology differs and has different characteristics. The touch screens use two different methods for the touch interaction namely “resistive” and “capacitive,” which respectively refer to the pressure and the touch sensitivity.
The TFT LCD with Touch-Screen displays are capable of displaying high contrast, bright and clear pixels. It can be used in HDTV, laptop monitors, smart phones, computer monitors etc.
Also, the LCD Display with a Touch Screen is in high demand because they offer impressive features and they are the most popular choice in the touch screen displays. The capacitive touch display responds efficiently to the human finger and can handle multi-touch for enhanced usability. Capacitive touch screen monitors are suitable for the navigation system, smart phones, game consoles, and more.
There is an exhaustive variety of the capacitive touch monitor displays available in the market. If you are looking an LCD touch screen for your product then there are numerous companies that provide the comprehensive range of such display that can be customized to your specific needs
There are many companies that specialize in manufacturing the Laptop LCD Display. These companies have the technological competence and manufacturing capabilities to design the products that incorporate all imperative and advanced features. To meet this ever-growing need company that specialize in creating different types of the LCD modules and touch displays offer an extensive variety of products so that the client can easily find the suitable product that meets their needs. Also, these companies provide customized solutions to the unique requirements of clients for size, functionality, and budget.
These companies have the state-of-the-art LCD manufacturing facilities that facilitate them to build LCD displays to the exact requirements of the clients within the stipulated time period. They charge a reasonable price for their solutions; however, the price may vary bases on the client’s requirements customized solutions. To locate a paramount and reliable company that offer impeccable solutions for different types of touch screen displays one can browse the web or ask referrals from a trusted source.
Experts maintain that this technology is becoming the standard equipment of cell phone nowadays. Both resistance type and capacitive type can be applied. Although the resistance type is applied by the Smart Phone earlier, customers like to prefer the capacitive type more, because the integrated circuit control and the single design make the price low. Designers of feature phone are trying to change from resistance type to the capacitive type, offering better experience for customers. It is predicated that the shipment of capacitive type will be more than the resistance type.
The touch screen cell phone is a good choice for viewing web pages and writing the E-mail with the virtual keyboard interface. Therefore, many kinds of capacitive touch screen cell phones were released in the last year. The quantity of this phone will increase in the following months.
Although the price of capacitive touch screen cell phone is very high, the low cost hones may become the obstacle of its development. Experts say that the capacitive touch screen technology used in the low cost device will have the noise. What is important, the cost will not become the obstacle with the integration between noise suppression technologies and the low cost touch screen. Customers’ increasing demand for the capacitive interface will drive the development of this industry; even the entry level Smart Phone will use this technology.
Contact Faytech North America for all your questions.
faytech North America is the New York distribution center for all faytech products. faytech NA specializes in the design, development, manufacturing and marketing of specific computing solutions such as: Touch Screen Desktops, Touch Screen Computers, Embedded Computers, Industrial PCs, Industrial Computers, Resistive Touch PCs, and Computer Kiosks. In addition we offer touch screen display solutions: Touch Screen Monitors, Capacitive Touch Screens, IP65 Displays, High Brightness Displays, Sunlight Readable Displays, Industrial Monitors, Resistive Monitors, and Rugged Monitors. faytech NA also customizes projects for our clients throughout North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
faytech NA currently manufactures 7–22” Touchscreen Monitors, 8–19” Touchscreen PCs, and the 32–42–55” Touchscreen PC LFT Series. Additionally, we have developed our own proprietary PC motherboard, which is manufactured exclusively by ASUS.
Whether it is finding the ideal product for your business, to the installation of the products or to technical support, our entire team works hard to always provide our customers with the best products and service on the market. At faytech North America, we guarantee customer satisfaction. Our staff is fully trained and knowledgeable about every product we offer, ready to assist you with whatever information is needed. Feel free to contact us at any time with any questions, or to learn more about a faytech NA high quality display solutions for your unique company.
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