It was a a few years ago that Alexa started listening to me everywhere. After my first honeymoon with an original Echo Dot (a device I still maintain is the best alarm clock ever), I’ve slowly filled my home with Amazon’s review units. These days I usually break out Google and Apple-made speakers for comparison testing. The fact is, Amazon’s smart speakers work so well that there’s never been a reason to switch my entire system.
In terms of price, compatibility, audio quality – and now, thanks to a sleek, circular redesign, look – the new Echo remains one of the best smart speakers for most people. As long as you don’t mind Alexa, or don’t have a Bezos-related vendetta, I’d go so far as to say it’s the best $ 100 speaker out there.
Round noise
The main difference between the new Echo and older tubular models is the round design. It looks like one of those foam dodge beams I used to get pelted over in high school, but with four rubber buttons on the top and a power cord for a tail.
This new shape is not only an aesthetic change, but also reshapes the way the speaker interacts with acoustic environments. I’ve found that the redesigned stereo speaker pushes sound across a room more evenly than the last-gen Echo, making it much more of a whole-room speaker than it used to be.
This makes it more usable as the Goldilocks of Amazon’s smart speaker line, between the smaller Echo Dot (which comes in the standard, kids, and clock editions) and the larger Echo Studio. Just know it is doing have a slightly larger footprint than before.
It sounds bigger, better and more balanced than ever. I left my review unit on the 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 adjoining living room with enough sound for quarantined dance parties with my fiancé and our clumsy rescue dogs.
The new Echo has a few things under the hood that make it the best of its predecessors. First and foremost, there is a new adaptive EQ engine, which allows the speaker to listen and adapt to the room in which it is playing, using information it gathers from built-in microphones.
Put it near walls or corners and it can make the bass sound a little better. It’s not what you hear, it’s what you don’t hear; the adaptive sound is meant to make sure your music sounds the same everywhere. I moved it around my room and didn’t notice a huge change in balance or soundstage (how “big” the music feels in the room), but did notice that in tighter corners it sounded much less booming than the previous generation.
New speaker drivers also boost low-end performance, with the 3-inch woofer sticking out pretty damn deep into the frequency spectrum for a speaker this size. It’s also much louder than competitors like the Google Nest Audio (8/10, WIRED recommended), which I had next to it on the counter (although the bass gets muddy at full volume).
Then there’s the built-in Zigbee receiver that makes it easy to connect a bunch of smart home devices, and an Amazon Sidewalk receiver, a soon-to-be-launched Amazon service that uses Bluetooth Low Energy to keep devices connected outside but close to your home.
Known favorites
As a longtime Spotify user, I’ve always been impressed with how easy it is to set up Echo devices with Spotify Connect, and it was just as easy this time around. I set it up in the Alexa app and was streaming Mariah Carey’s Christmas hits in no time.