Amazon’s Echo Show 5 and Show 8 are up to 50 percent off right now

If you have a New Year’s resolution to enhance your smart home, buying a smart display isn’t a bad way to kick things off. The Echo Show 5 is one of the most cost-effective ways to add a visual interface to control your devices, especially since it’s receiving a 50 percent discount that brings it down to $44.99 ($45 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That’s only $5 more than its all-time low. You can also get the larger Echo Show 8 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $84.99 ($65 off), which is also $5 more than its lowest price to date.

The Show 5 makes for a meaningful upgrade if you already own a dedicated Echo speaker. Although it only has a 5.5-inch screen, the Alexa-enabled smart display can still function as your primary smart home hub. You can use it to monitor and manage smart home devices, play and control music, make video calls with its 2-megapixel camera (with integrated privacy shutter), and even stream shows and movies. The small size makes it ideal as a bedside alarm clock or smart photo frame if you later upgrade to a bigger device.

Speaking of which, the Show 8 is what you want if you plan to make the display the centerpiece of your smart home. Not only does the bigger screen allow you to use up to four widgets concurrently, but it also supports Matter and Thread, and doubles as a Zigbee hub. These widely standardized protocols allow compatible smart home devices to work well with the smart display as if they were natively built to do so. Plus, the Show 8 has a more powerful speaker with a satisfying sound for impromptu jam sessions.