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These include weather reports, playing radio stations or individual songs (if available), doing conversions (“Alexa, what’s 37 degrees in Fahrenheit?”), answering general knowledge questions (though not nearly as well as Google Assistant), telling Dad jokes, and playing simple games.

Alexa can also call most numbers that are not in your contacts list if you spell them out (“Alexa, call 0 2 0 8…).Īlexa performs many other useful functions, too. After that you will be able to make calls by saying “Alexa, call grandma”. You set up an Alexa Show from a smartphone app and give it access to your contacts list. Bigger screens are better, but the 8in version is the best value for money and, in my experience, the 5in model works well enough. I think it’s the lesser of three evils, but the final choice is up to you. At least with Amazon I’m a paying customer, whereas Google and Facebook make most of their money from surveillance-based advertising. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardianįortunately, there is an alternative that I can recommend and use myself: Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo Show. Amazon’s Echo ShowĪmazon’s Echo Show comes in a variety of sizes, including with a 5in screen (front right) and with a 10in screen (back centre). It has a good 6.5 megapixel camera, a 10in screen and a voice-controlled Google Assistant, but it also comes with privacy concerns.

Google’s Nest Hub Max ( £219) is similar to the standalone Portal. It plugs into your TV set and works with its own small remote as well as its “Hey Portal” voice control. The version that could swing it for some people is Portal TV from Facebook ( £149), which doesn’t have a screen. (I assume grandma isn’t using Facebook now as you’d probably have tried Facebook Messenger as the most obvious option.) The drawbacks are that it involves using Facebook, it is expensive, and you are bound to have privacy concerns. You can make video calls via WhatsApp as well as Facebook Messenger, and it has Amazon’s Alexa built in. The smart cameras and tracking are far better than you get in most home speaker-type devices. I can understand the appeal of the Facebook Portal because it is designed for the job. If you have to start from scratch, try it out with someone else and find the tricky bits before involving grandma. If you can get the same equipment at both ends, even better. You’re probably going to have to do remote telephone support and the more familiar you are with a system, the easier that will be. In this case, I recommend going with whatever you know best.