Echo Dot (5th generation, 2022 release) | Big vibrant sound Wi-Fi and Bluetooth smart speaker with Alexa | Charcoal

Product Information

This feature has an accessibility bonus since it can be used as a way to provide visual cues to those with hearing challenges. With its high-tech sound features, including Dolby audio, you’ll be able to enjoy your favorite beats at the right volume. Mashable is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without express written permission. With Echo Dot, you can stay on track with help from Alexa and control compatible smart home devices.

The very first Echo was a pretty dreary-sounding tube, but successive iterations have improved the sound somewhat. It does only have one microphone, and sometimes struggled to pick up our voice from a considerable distance across the room. Based on my testing, it’s not going to give you the same performance as if you were connected to an Eero node, but it could be helpful to extend coverage to, say, a video doorbell or security camera outside your home. Echo Dot + another Echo - Fill your home with music using compatible Echo devices in different rooms.Playing Greta Van Fleet’s Zeppelin-esque operatic ballad Meeting The Master is a stern test for a small speaker, but the dynamics, range and balance of presentation are impressive, and while you’ll get a far superior experience on more dedicated hi-fi speakers, this is an admirable effort from a budget-friendly smart speaker.

The Echo Dot 5th Gen is one of the most popular smart speakers for several reasons: It's compact, it sounds decent, and it's affordable.They’ll do the work for you, so you can relax and take care of stuff that actually matters sans interruptions. You can also use the Dot in conjunction with your Fire TV when you set up Alexa Home Cinema for a more immersive and interactive viewing experience. Since then, the corporate giant has unveiled even newer products (in the Echo Show and Echo Pop families). For most things Alexa and Assistant are on a level playing field, particularly if you’re not entirely integrated into Google’s ecosystem already.

That’s the full extent of the changes for the basic Echo Dot, but the Echo Dot with Clock also gets a bonus improvement. The primary data collected by the Echo Dot with Clock are voice and smart home device interactions with Alexa. They can give travel times, weather reports and traffic updates, stream podcasts and online radio channels such as BBC Sounds, play games, answer trivia questions, read bedtime stories and much more. At my own home, I use Google Assistant because I've found it responds better to Australian accents, but if I based my choice on sound quality alone, I'd pick Alexa.The older, standard 3rd iteration of the Echo Dot comes in three colors - charcoal, heather grey, and sandstone (that'll be black, grey, or white to the rest of us).

Making the smart living/smart home switch isn’t always budget-friendly, but the Echo Dot is affordable and provides great voice control features. It also lights up yellow when you have a system notification, though it's easy to turn this off in Settings. For example, it is possible to ask Alexa to delete the history of content, voice requests, detected sounds and even commands given to elements of the smart-home system. Compared to the 5th-generation Echo Dot, the Echo Pop features a smaller, more compact size, making it a perfect speaker for a small space. Try saying: "Alexa, set a timer for five minutes," "Alexa, play the Reuters news briefing," "Alexa, open my daily horoscope," or "Alexa, find my phone.

It won’t stand on its own if you’re intending to put it on a table, however, as there’s no rear-facing slant like the Echo Show 8. The riffs and vocals in The Crystal Method’s “Burn Too Slow” get plenty of high-mid attention, though again the fairly limited range of the speaker is apparent. On the top are the familiar four buttons: two for adjusting volume, one for cutting off the microphone and another to make Alexa listen if it can’t hear you shouting the wake word. The idea was to run a Routine that reads the weather and my calendar and then plays NPR in the morning when the shower starts, but the Routine would start playing at the smallest tinkle of running water (if you know what I mean). Ask Alexa to find the perfect playlist or podcast, and you’ll have something to listen to when you cook in the kitchen, lounge on the couch, or work out in your living room.