Amazon’s Echo Show 10 is a neat gadget for its ability to move with you while you stream videos and make calls to friends and family. But for a smart display whose entire reason for being its support for these uses, the Echo Show lacked one major app used universally during the pandemic: Zoom.
When Gizmodo reviewed the Echo Show 10 last month, a spokesperson said at the time support for Zoom was “coming soon.” That support has finally arrived, making a good gadget pretty great. Customers with the third-generation Echo Show 10 can now prompt Alexa to join Zoom or Amazon Chime meetings by using commands like, “Alexa, join my meeting,” “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting,” or “Alexa, join my Amazon Chime meeting.”
The Echo Show 10 can start meetings hands-free once your calendar has been linked through the Alexa app (which is how support for some other services like music apps works as well). Amazon says that its voice assistant “will automatically start your scheduled meeting entirely hands-free without you needing your meeting ID or passcode—just confirm the meeting title you want to join.”
Zoom had been a major blind spot on the device given how it’s meant to be used, so support on the Echo Show 10 is welcome. The only other major failing of the device, though, was support for a greater number of streaming apps.
A dedicated YouTube app, for example, would be a bare-minimum addition to the Echo Show 10’s current limited lineup of streaming apps, which include Food Network Kitchen, Happy TV, Hulu, NBC, Netflix, Prime Video, Redbull TV, and Tubi. Currently, it can be accessed through a web browser, but a dedicated app would be useful for things like picking up where you left off on a video.
At the very least, you can now call your family using the lockdown video-conferencing app of choice.