Amazon Echo Show 5 Kids (newest model), Designed for kids, Designed for Alexa+, parental controls, Includes 1 year of Amazon Kids+, Galaxy

Does what I bought it for, and more
I bought this when it was on sale a few weeks ago, and so far, I really like it. I was quite skeptical at first, because I don’t really use Alexa on my phone or Fire tablet, and I’d heard mixed things about it, especially on reddit, but it surpasses my (admittedly low) expectations. Because I generally rely on poking about rather than using manuals or FAQs unless I have a specific question, it took me a little while to find all of the various settings (they’re primarily on the phone app), but it didn’t take long to get it set up the way I wanted. I’ve tweaked the settings a bit since, but it actually works pretty well right out of the box with a very short setup time. I primarily use it as a smart home device controller, to ask the weather, and other mundane tasks.I find the music playback really fine, and it’s had no problem playing my Amazon music playlists. It also has Bluetooth, so I can pair it with my phone if I want to use a different music or podcast service that isn’t natively supported (e.g., YouTube music or Castbox).Although I bought the kids version of the Echo 5, it works just like the regular Echo. It does have very good parental controls, though, and some added perks, like kids’ stories, if you subscribe to Amazon Kids (which you get a free trial of). The skin on this one is really nice, a celestial theme, which I actually prefer to the solid-colored versions offered in the adult range.I greatly prefer it to Google’s “Gemini for Home,” which doesn’t work even as well as Google assistant did. Alexa, or at least Alexa+, remembers conversations and preferences (which Google only does sporadically, and after doing it once, claimed it couldn’t save preferences or remember conversations). Alexa can also read back my entire grocery list, and the Google nest mini always stops after five items. I’ve switched from using Google Keep notes for shopping lists, which I’ve used for years, to using Alexa’s lists.(*see the edit below)The one thing that I didn’t like at first is that, although it will cycle through whatever pictures you choose as a background screen, it also has ads and various “news and lifestyle” that pop up every so often. However, I asked Alexa how to get rid of the news that I didn’t want to see, and it told me where to find the settings. I turned off all of the categories that I wasn’t interested in (e.g., random stock tickers, sports, etc.), and now I primarily see the weather screen, a few topics that I’m genuinely interested in (not that I bother to get up and tap the screen to view anything more about them), and not very many ads. Since I don’t sit and stare at it, it doesn’t annoy me now that I’ve tweaked the settings. ETA: I tweaked the settings some more, and now all I see are the pictures (with the time, date, and temperature) scrolling through and the weather forecast. So you can get rid of any of the annoying ads. If you don’t want ads, just make sure that you don’t include something that you’re theoretically interested in, like health and fitness, that could be used to serve you ads.The Echo also has modules that you can use and have them always visible, but I like the clean look of the screen saver with the clock and weather on it. You can place the clock in various spots on the screen, and choose to include the weather or not. Since I primarily interact with the Echo using my voice, I haven’t used the modules much. In a different room, I might use them more.I have Alexa+ through Prime, so some of my experiences may be different from those who have plain Alexa. But it does seem that Alexa is more functional than Gemini for home. For example, both Alexa and Alexa+ have the follow-up or “continued conversation” feature, so you don’t have to constantly repeat the wake word to ask a follow-up question or give another command. Now that Gemini for home is active on my Nest mini, every time I talk to it and have follow-ups, I have to say the wake word again, which becomes very tedious. Google has now put that feature behind a paywall.Alexa’s integration of the home assistant and the AI chatbot is complete, but the Gemini for home is kind of a watered-down version of the Gemini AI, and it isn’t as good an assistant as the previous Google assistant was.I’ll come back to update this review if I find any major hiccups in its performance, as I use it, but for now, I’m pleasantly surprised.*ETA: regarding lists. I am not going to use this feature very much because it is TOO integrated with Alexa. Once you create a list, it’s there forever; you can clear it and rename it, but you can’t delete or archive it. Theoretically, you could end up with several unwanted “ghost” lists just hanging around. Another problem with the lists is that you can’t interact with them unless you have a connection to the internet either through wifi or mobile data. Yesterday I was in a store that, once you get ten feet into the store, you lose cellular connection and the store has no guest wifi. So I couldn’t check off anything on my list as I was picking it up or add anything else I might think of while I was shopping. In addition, there’s no way for other family members to add items to the list. I like sharing certain lists and that’s not possible with Alexa.Since Alexa cannot access any list apps on the phone (nor any other devices that have Alexa), I’m not going to use the list feature unless there’s at least the ability to get rid of unwanted lists.Alexa mentioned that it could interact with Todoist, so if that’s something you’re already using or are interested in, that may provide a solution. For now, I’m just going to stick with Keep Notes.

Can’t get it to work, refund not issued after 3 weeks
Very difficult to use. 99% of the time it doesn’t do what we want. And, the device is super slow which makes it even more frustrating to trouble shoot. I bought this device for my ten year old. I thought this would be perfect because it could function as an alarm clock and stereo for her. She sings all of the time and I liked that it would show her the lyrics to the songs she loves. When we could get music to play, it sounded good. But we could not access any of the kids screens we see out there on you tube and other feeds. I called twice for support, spent almost an hour each time. Sometimes Alexa suggests that we ask “Alexa open skills skills.” (Why two skills???) I just asked her that now and nothing happened. I’ve removed all time/user restrictions to make sure that wasn’t the issue and it still doesn’t work. I just asked the device to play music. No response. Also, I see that many people have the Echo set to a resting position of a clock. Ours won’t do that. This should be so simple! I find it frustrating that we are directed to the device, the general Alexa app on the parent phone and the kids app on the parent phone to do stuff. Like I choose the clock face on the device but then had to go to the parent app to choose the 12 hour format (originally sets to 24 format.) Why can’t all of the settings be in the parent Alexa app?I’ve watched several videos on how to get the clock display to show but instead the screen just shows a picture of a fantasy city and the time is a tiny view in the upper right hand corner. I tried calling customer support twice. Very long phone calls and the people were not able to figure it out. Lastly, when I was reviewing the ads the photos showed Percy Jackson and Harry Potter books. I have looked everywhere and could not find that or get access to it. We ended up returning this on 12/21/25. It is now 1/14/26 and the refund still shows as processing. If we could have gotten this to work, I would have loved it….clock/alarm with a song, music with lyrics, Alexa video calls, Alexa AI assistance, parent controls. But I’ve spent waaaaaay to much time trying to to figure this out. And it’s not just me. My husband also tried to figure out how this operates and couldn’t figure it out either. Aside from the settings screen, these are the views we have. Maybe on 3 occasions we were able to access the view with all of the widgets/skills that a child can use but most of the time the device doesn’t respond. Even now, I ask it do something and it does nothing. Very disappointed. Also, the lowest volume is not low. You can press the button to make it louder and softer, but the lowest volume setting is what I would call medium volume.Update: I really wanted this to work so we tried buying another one from a local store that offered tech support. Once we turned off the Amazon Kids + setting, it works somewhat. Note that there are news headlines that cycle through the resting screen about everything from Hollywood headlines to stock market news. Our attempts to turn that off have been unsuccessful and we still cannot get the device to just show the clock face when not in use. But, we are keeping it. This experience could be so much better if there were comprehensive instructions.

Echo shows fantastic
This device is awesome, seriously a great buy for the price! It arrived super quickly, which was a nice surprise. Setting it up was a breeze, no complicated steps at all. I’m loving being able to see the weather and my shopping list right on it. Totally recommend these kinds of smart gadgets!

Great for kids room
Looks nice in his bedroom. Sounds great and don’t take up much room. Easy to setup and use the parental controls and set time restrictions.