The third-gen Echo Show 8 has a new look and some excellent changes under the hood. | Photo by Alex Cranz / The Verge
And Echo Show 8 makes three! Amazon now has three smart home hubs, with the Echo Show 8 (third-gen) joining the newly announced Echo Hub and existing fourth-gen Echo smart speaker in sporting both Thread and Zigbee connectivity. These wireless radios, along with Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, and Sidewalk, mean the new Show 8 can be used to set up and control almost any smart home device (sorry, Z-Wave).
This also rounds out Amazon’s Echo options that fully support the new smart home standard Matter (over both Thread and Wi-Fi) quite nicely, although one at a lower price point than $100 would be good.
The third-gen Echo Show 8 ($149.99) also has Amazon’s latest AZ2 processor, which makes it 40 percent faster, Amazon’s Dave Limp said at the fall…