Amazon Big Deal Days: Your Kitchen Needs the Echo Show 8 at This Crazy Low Price

I confess: I'm not much of a chef, but I do have to be in the kitchen frequently handling mom duties that arise. I don't keep cookbooks around, so I often ask Alexa how to make a certain dish, and she always delivers, showing me a decent, simple recipe even I can whip up without too much trouble.

But here are all the other reasons I like having the Show in the kitchen: music, information, photo displays to remind me of the people I'm cooking for. Even if I know the recipe (cough, cough, open box of frozen food, drop food into oven), I like a bit of background music to annoy my children with my dancing and singalongs; the Show is happy to oblige.

Alexa can also quickly answer the occasional kid question and will typically show us an image to prove her point (get it? 'Show' us the image?).

Anyway, I digress. The technical beauty of the Echo Show 8 is that it has spatial audio, room acoustic sensing, and noise reduction capabilities. It works with every other Alexa in my home, and she's my go-to for kitchen timers when I can't be bothered to set one on the stove and have to yell at someone to remind me to take the lasagna out of the oven.

The screen is a decent size, by the way. My kids love to hijack it and watch YouTube while they chow down on cereal (don't judge); you can also get Netflix or FireTV channels to play on it, too. And it's great for actually seeing recipes and related images so I know what I'm supposed to be doing and what a dish should look like. Heck, you can even see your calendar on it.

Right now, Amazon's got the Echo Show 8 on sale at 43 percent off as a precursor to its Big Deal Days event. Supplies are limited, though, so if you've even just thought about buying one, now is the time to do it. Don't wait around to see if the deal continues, or you could easily miss out.