I also observed an echo of my own voice in several Zoom calls, both with individuals and group calls, which made it hard to use the Echo Show for anything work related. Joining Zoom calls can be done entirely by voice, but it’s much easier to call up the Zoom app on the Echo Show by saying “Alexa, open Zoom” and then typing in a meeting code or starting one yourself from the touchscreen. If you are on a call where someone is sharing a screen, it’s hard to see what’s happening, and while you can view messages posted to a chat, you can’t type any out yourself on the Echo Show’s display.

The Echo Show 8’s eight-inch display works fine for one-on-one video calls, but it’s too small to comfortably use for a group call. But it can also cause the image to look distorted at times and isn’t always very flattering. The new camera has a much wider-angle lens, which allows it to do those auto-framing tricks. That said, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. You can use the Echo Show 8 for Zoom calls, but it works best for one-on-one calling, not groups If you don’t want the camera to autoframe, you can say “Alexa follow off” to disable it. But the Echo Show is a $130 smart display, not an $800 tablet, so it’s hard to complain, so long as you stay relatively still during video calls. The autoframing isn’t as good as the new iPad Pro’s Center Stage feature, and it moves much slower and tends to constantly reframe itself, like you’re the star of a Ken Burns documentary.

The Echo Show 8 doesn’t have the motorized base on the bigger Echo Show 10, but it still can automatically frame you and follow you around as you move thanks to its high resolution. In my testing with Zoom calls, the image is much sharper and more pleasant to look at, with better color and much more detail. You can use the Echo Show for video calls to the Alexa app on phones or other Echo Show devices, or you can join Skype, Zoom, or Amazon’s Chime calls from it. The improvements in video calls are immediately noticeable. You can still block the camera’s view with a physical shutter.

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