Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen)

OK I’ll try to keep this short. The last review I posted on this item was not shown, or if it was shown, I searched and could not find it. After posting a negative review I was contacted by Amazon. Mind you, I returned this item almost a month ago. I reviewed this item and two days later Amazon called and left me two voice messages. I was not available, nor did I get the messages. I was actually in the shower so I had no idea someone had reached out to me. Upon exiting the shower they called me again. I heard the phone so I answered it. I didn’t realize that they had left two messages until I got off the phone with them and saw that there were two messages from the same gentleman about 10 minutes before I spoke with them. The man from Amazon never told me that he left two messages so I thought it was kind of weird as that has never happened to me. As I said, he was very polite and wanted to see if he could do anything to help with the product. So, obviously, the review was seen, the review was responded to, but the review was never posted. I know it is not this gentleman’s fault by any way, shape or form but it would’ve been nice to have someone contact me when I was returning the item because quite possibly some thing could have been done and maybe I had a bad unit. Like, instead of calling me, after I leave a bad review, they could’ve called when they saw the item being returned. I will never know. I’m trying to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt and to say that they actually were reaching out to me to try to see what was going on with this particular unit BUT we will never know. This is not an attempt to attack Amazon in any way It’s just a very confusing situation. So, I will say this about the unit. It is small. It is 5 inches so don’t expect anything much larger than your cell phone. For being so small, it is slightly bulky and unless you have a stand for it, it really doesn’t sit too perfectly on a table. Especially, if you want to turn the unit to face you or face another area in the room. You can compare it to a cell phone but it does not have the resolution that a cell phone has. Maybe the resolution of an older cell phone from say 2011. I am trying to guesstimate. The resolution isn’t putrid, but it’s certainly not worth watching anything more than a commercial or something like that on it. Like I said, the best use would be for a quick video, chat, quickly, watching your animals or children, while you’re away from home, or in another room, maybe looking up a recipe, or if your unit doesn’t glitch out, maybe playing a goofy game. Unfortunately, none of these things worked for me. The audio clipped, and sounded terrible, even when I used the equalizer, and had it hooked up with three other Amazon devices. The photos it took were grainy and not very good. The video was kind of a joke to me because it glitched out so much and really if you needed video of someone doing something bad in your home, this would not be the device to pick that up. Unless you buy a battery pack, you really can’t sit with this thing on your lap and watch a movie. I don’t know or remember if there is a headphone out Jack. That would be a plus if there were a headphone out jack that way you could privately have a conversation with someone or watch a television show (which would probably be much better just using your cell phone lol). As what all the echo devices are doing now, this device has a white cords which powers them up and if the devices are either gray or black, you’re pretty much stuck to the white cord, which looks ridiculous if you’re trying to seamlessly integrate with your living room, or any other room in the house that you don’t want a giant white cord sticking out of. Maybe, the 8 inch version is better. I don’t know cause I’ve never tried it, but I would definitely stay away from the 5 inch version and make sure you have a blazing Internet connection because I have a darn fast, Internet connection and even testing at a foot away from my modem, it still glitched out. I would love to suggest this during Prime days if you also got a free plug or something with it, but in good conscience, I can’t really suggest this item. Maybe, if you desperately need a monitor and you’re not using the internal camera, this could be decent. Or, you can just use your phone as the monitor to your cameras and basically bypass an over priced digital alarm clock. Pros- Alarm clock Looks decent Camera shutter cover Easy to set up Cons- Poor audio Bad connection Poor camera Poor video White cord Freezes a lot