Smart speakers are great, but smart displays are even better. They can do everything a smart speaker can do, but they can also show you things: Videos, lyrics, maps, commute conditions, weather reports, live TV, art, photographs, who's at the front door or sneaking through your backyard. When you don't want to use your voice, a smart display lets you control lights, your thermostat, door locks, and other smart home devices with touch instead. Two players dominate the smart display market today: Amazon, with its Echo Show, powered by its Alexa digital assistant (we won't consider the smaller Echo Spot here), and Google, with its Google Smart Home Hub, powered by its Google Assistant. After in-depth comparisons on seven eight counts, one emerges as the clear winner.

Need another smart speaker to consider for your holiday gift-giving? The LG smart display we spotted at CES is finally ready to go on sale complete with its 8-inch touch screen, Android Things platform with apps for Google Maps, Photos and YouTube plus Google Assistant-powered AI features. LG is touting the speakers and their Meridian Audio technology, which it hopes will make the $300 MSRP easier to swallow among all of that competition. That's more than the $200 8-inch Lenovo Smart Display that also runs Android Things and Google's own $150 Home Hub which does not, not to mention the various other options with Alexa, Siri, Facebook or Cortana onboard. It's even more than the $250 JBL Link View which similarly focuses on audio quality.

The second-generation Echo Show is better than the first in every respect, ranging from its industrial design to its audio and video performance. It's the best smart display today, but that could change as soon as tomorrow if Google announces its own smart display and it turns out to be great. Sonos, meanwhile, still has the best smart speakers for music (the Sonos One and the Sonos Beam). While the second-generation Echo Show is powered by the same system-on-chip as the first-generation Echo Show (a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8350), the new model is outfitted with a larger, higher-resolution display; better loudspeakers; a more attractive enclosure; an integrated ZigBee smart home hub; and even the option for hardwired ethernet. Alexa is also becoming a better digital assistant, a development that will improve every Echo model.