Amazon Echo Show 21

The $399.99 Echo Show 21 is Amazon's largest smart display. With a 21-inch screen, it's almost 6 inches larger than the $299.99 Echo Show 15, but otherwise, the two are identical. It's essentially a massive touch screen housed in what looks like a picture frame. It has a 13MP camera for video calls and home monitoring, uses Amazon's Fire TV media interface, and supports voice control via Alexa. That said, it's fairly expensive and produces only average sound. It's worth checking out if you want the biggest smart display possible, but we prefer the $249.99 Amazon Echo Show 10. It can't hang on a wall, but it sounds better and has a motorized base that lets it turn to face you wherever you are in the room. 

Design: The Bigger Picture

The Echo Show 21 looks just like the Echo Show 15, just bigger. It measures 13.2 by 21.4 by 1.5 inches (HWD). A 1.8-inch white mat and 0.4-inch flat black frame surround the 21-inch screen. The design gives the impression of a framed picture. A square cutout on the top edge of the white mat houses the built-in camera. It looks like a black square, but a mechanical switch on the top moves a white, physical privacy shutter over it to help reinforce the illusion when you disable the camera. The top of the frame also has mic mute and volume buttons, as well as pinholes for the far-field microphones.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The back of the screen includes a large square recess for its included mount, with a deeper circular recess in the middle for the power adapter. The circular recess has two slots: One faces the bottom long edge, and the other faces the right short edge. They help you run the power cable down, regardless of whether the smart display is in portrait or landscape orientation.

Like the Echo Show 15, the Echo Show 21 is primarily for wall-mounting. As such, it doesn't come with a stand. If you want to set up the monitor-size device on a counter, desk, or table, you need to spend an extra $100 for Amazon's Premium Adjustable Stand. Amazon sent one with the Echo Show 15 for testing, which is pictured throughout this review. It’s a solid metal stand with a circular base and a pillar with a tiltable mount for the screen. The base rotates on its flat foot, meaning you can adjust the horizontal and vertical angles of the screen. It doesn’t support height adjustment like many other monitor stands, however. It also doesn't automatically rotate like the motorized base of the Echo Show 10.

Interface: Alexa and Fire TV

Echo Show smart displays combine the Amazon Alexa voice assistant with a touch screen for non-voice control and visual navigation. The Alexa aspect is simple: Say, “Alexa,” followed by a command, and Alexa will perform said task. Responses come through through the device’s speakers, appear on the screen, or both. Alexa has become quite powerful; it can control smart home devices; help you set appointments, reminders, and to-do list items to check later; make video and voice calls; provide information like recipes, sports scores, and weather reports; and search for content like movies, music, news, and TV shows.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The Echo Show 21’s large touch screen augments Alexa and enables it to serve as a hub for organizing your home. A customizable control panel of widgets dominates the default home screen. These provide quick access to your calendar, Fire TV apps, music picks, and smart home devices. A few dozen different widgets are available, though the most useful ones are those that Amazon offers directly. Among the others, three different apps make the smart display play a fart sound, and another functions as a virtual fireplace.

A proximity sensor on the device adjusts what’s on the screen when you aren't actively using it. When no one is nearby, it closes the control panel and rotates through a variety of screens. It can provide content and feature suggestions, serve as a digital picture frame with a few art galleries of your photos, or show the latest news. You can specify which screens show up. You will likely want to disable most of the options unless you like seeing the screen suggest you say, “Alexa, watch TV,” or, “Alexa, show me a recipe for cookies,” every five minutes.

As a whole-home hub, the Echo Show 21 supports multiple user profiles. It can automatically switch between profiles via facial recognition when the camera is active or via voice recognition with the microphones. These profiles adjust content presets and recommendations for each user independently. 

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Amazon equips its larger, wall-mountable smart displays with the Fire TV smart TV platform, which you can access from the home screen by tapping the Fire TV button near the top or pressing the home button on the remote. It’s a powerful interface that supports all major video streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube. It doesn’t support local video streaming from your devices, though; unlike Fire TV media streamers and TVs, the Echo Show 21 doesn’t have Miracast/WiDi.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The included remote enables you to use the Fire TV interface without walking up to the screen and tapping it. It’s the same one that comes with Amazon Fire TV Sticks: a flat, rectangular bar with a glossy circular navigation pad near the top. Power and Alexa buttons sit above the pad, along with a pinhole microphone if you want to use Alexa manually without the smart display’s far-field microphones. Playback controls, a volume rocker, menu buttons, and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix, and Peacock are below the pad. The remote can also control music playback and the Echo Show 21's volume, but no other base functions.

Screen: Big, Sharp, and Bright

With an extra 5.4 diagonal inches, the Echo Show 21’s 21-inch screen is approximately 80% larger than the Echo Show 15’s 15.6-inch screen. Both have a 1080p resolution, but the Show 21's lower pixel density isn't noticeable. Video looks nice and crisp.

Even though the Echo Show 21 has the Fire TV interface, the lack of a wired video connection option means I can't perform the usual tests I do on monitors and TVs. With well-trained eyeballing and visual comparison against monitors and TVs, though, I can give it a strong evaluation.

The Echo Show 21’s screen puts out plenty of light for a smart display during video playback. Its colors are reasonably accurate and saturated, though its color range doesn’t seem to be as wide as higher-end QLED and OLED monitors and TVs. If you want the screen to show similar performance when it isn’t playing video, you need to disable the adaptive brightness, adaptive color, and sunrise effect features. Otherwise, the smart display has a much more modest luminance level and will adjust its white balance to blend with its surroundings. The photo frame mode does a laudable job of imitating a framed, gently backlit physical print, similar to the Aura Mason digital picture frame. It looks natural on the wall. 

Camera: Tracking and Calls

The Echo Show 21, like the Echo Show 15, has a 13MP, wide-angle camera with auto-framing. You can use it to make video or voice calls to other Echo devices in your house, those your friends own, or anyone you know with the Alexa app on their phone. If you don’t want to use Amazon’s system, you can make calls on Skype or regular voice calls directly to most phones.

The camera is wider than the one on the Echo Show 10 but has the same resolution. It can use digital pan and zoom to keep you in the center of the frame. If the mechanical shutter isn't in place, you can also use the camera for security by accessing it remotely through the Alexa app. However, it doesn't provide motion alerts or automatic recording like other indoor home security cameras.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Sound: Loud, But Unrefined

The Echo Show 21 uses the same pairs of two-inch woofers and 0.6-inch tweeters that drive the Echo Show 15. During video playback, they sound comparable with a midrange 55-inch or 65-inch TV and can easily fill a room at medium to high volumes. Of course, most built-in TV speakers don’t have the most accurate, crispest, or deepest sound, so that's relatively faint praise.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

You won’t get big bass out of the flat Echo Show 21. On our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the smart display uses digital signal processing (DSP) to tamp down on the deepest frequencies. Even then, distortion starts to appear with the kick drum hits. The Echo Show 10 fares better here thanks to its superior driver setup (two one-inch tweeters and a single three-inch woofer); it still limits the low end, but it doesn't distort.

If you don’t need super-low frequency power, the Echo Show 21 offers acceptable music performance, with a limited dynamic range focused on the mids. The opening acoustic guitar plucks of Yes’ “Roundabout” get a bit of low-end resonance and the string texture comes through in the higher frequencies. It doesn’t handle treble with subtlety, though, so the notes sound more brittle than crisp. When the track properly kicks in, the punchy bassline takes center stage in the mix while the higher drums, guitar strums, and vocals settle further in the background.

Like most smart displays, the Echo Show 21 is fine for casual listening. A reasonably sized screen-less speaker like Amazon’s $199.99 Echo Studio offers much more power and clarity for less money.

Verdict: Bigger, But Not Necessarily Better

The Amazon Echo Show 21 is quite capable as a smart display, a whole-home hub, and a digital picture frame. Its 21-inch screen looks good and competently displays photos, videos, and smart home device control panels. It can also put out loud stereo sound, though not with much finesse. It’s effectively identical to the Echo Show 15, just with a much larger screen and a higher price. Either smart display is a good option for mounting on your wall, so it mostly comes down to your budget and which size you prefer. If you don't need a wall-mounted screen, however, the Echo Show 10 offers more powerful audio and a nifty motorized base that turns it in your direction so you can see it wherever you go.