It has been a a few years since Alexa started listening to me everywhere. After a first honeymoon with an original Echo Dot (a device I still keep is the best alarm clock in history), I’ve slowly been filling my house with Amazon review units. These days, I mainly describe speakers made by Google and Apple for comparison testing. The thing is, Amazon’s smart speakers work so well that there’s never been a reason to change the whole system.
In terms of price, compatibility, audio quality, and now, thanks to a sleek, round design, the new Echo remains one of the best smart speakers for most people. As long as you don’t mind Alexa or have a Bezos-related vendetta, I’d go so far as to say that this is the best $ 100 speaker.
So round
The biggest difference between the new Echo and the old tube-shaped models is the rounded design. It looks like one of those foam balls I used to hit in middle school, but with four rubber buttons on the top and a power cord for the tail.
This new shape is not only an aesthetic change, but also reshapes the way the speaker interacts with acoustic environments. I’ve noticed that the redesigned stereo speaker pushes the sound around a room more evenly than the latest-generation Echo model, making it a room-wide speaker than it once was.
This makes it easier to use as the golden locks on Amazon’s line of smart speakers, located between the small Echo Dot (which comes in standard, children’s and clock editions) and the larger Echo Studio . You just know does they have a slightly larger footprint than before.
It sounds bigger, better and more balanced than ever. I left my review unit on the kitchen counter, one of the most useful places for a smart speaker, as I can set timers, and it easily filled both the kitchen and my attached living room with enough sound for parties. dancing in quarantine with my promise and our clumsy rescue dogs.
The new Echo has a few things under the hood that allow it to outperform its predecessors. First, there is a new adaptive equalization motor, which allows the speaker to listen and adjust to the room where it is playing, using the information it obtains from the on-board microphones.
Put it close to the walls or corners and you can tame the bass so they sound a little better. It’s not what you feel, it’s what you don’t; adaptive sound is designed to make your music sound the same everywhere. I moved it around my room and didn’t notice a big change in balance or sound stage (how “big” the music in the space feels), but I realized it sounded a lot less boom in more corners adjusted than the last generation.
The new speaker drivers also increase low-end performance, with a 3-inch woofer that extends very deep into the frequency spectrum of a speaker of this size. It’s also much stronger than competitors like the Google Nest Audio (8/10, recommended by WIRED), which had it sitting side by side on the counter (although the bass gets muddy at full volume).
In addition, there is the integrated Zigbee receiver that allows you to easily connect a large number of smart home devices and an Amazon Sidewalk receiver, an Amazon service that will be launched soon and uses Bluetooth Low Energy to keep devices connected off but close to your home.
Family favorites
As a long-time Spotify user, I’ve always been impressed with the ease of setting up Echo devices with Spotify Connect, and this time it’s been that simple. I set it up in the Alexa app and premiered Mariah Carey’s Christmas hits in a no-brainer.