AMAZON ECHO STUDIO
Fantastic audio quality, very useful features and a great price make the Echo Studio a winner.
It’s a very rare review that mentions a marketing stunt, but with Amazon’s Echo Studio, it’s warranted. The scene: the latest incarnation of Sydney’s famous The Basement venue. The stage was literally a foot high with some instruments at the back and a table with a tablecloth covering something – not very impressive, frankly. The lights dim, a room full of seasoned, cynical tech journos prepare for the opening talk while music fills the auditorium. The keynote speaker comes to the table, removes the cloth to reveal that the roomfilling music was coming from the Echo Studio all along. The room full of cynical tech journos, many of whom were at a very high-end Technics speaker launch the night before, almost all gasped at what the diminutive speaker had achieved.
The reasoning behind the Echo Studio’s inception is valid: many people use their smart speakers to play music but most smart speakers struggle with high-end audio reproduction. As such, while the core functionality is old-school Echo smartspeaker, the audio components are very high-end and support 3D audio and Dolby Atmos. The cylindrical body contains three, two-inch mid-range speakers (two at the sides, one at the top), a one-inch, front-firing tweeter and an 5.25-inch sub. Peak audio output is a whopping 350 Watts. There’s also a built-in Zigbee [smart device] hub meaning it can be the centrepiece of an entire smart home. If you’ve a Fire TV Stick, you can play your TV’s audio through it.
Setting the speaker up is a simple affair although you’ll naturally need an Amazon account to connect to first. You’re instructed to download the Amazon Alexa app which then walks you through the connection to the point where Alexa starts talking to you directly and responding to your answers. The charcoal speaker itself is very smartly-designed with a colourful ring on top that reacts to what you’re saying. Four small, discreet buttons allow for volume adjustment, microphone off and Alexa activation.
A free trial to Amazon’s Music HD service provides instant access to a vast music library with “hundreds” of songs tailored to its 3D audio capabilities. It’s also compatible with streaming services like iHeartRadio.
Another feature is Alexa Skills, which are ‘Apps for Voice.’ It allows you to ask Alexa for recipes and instructions on how to do tasks. Alexa will then either send the instructions straight to your phone or read through them. While it’s still a little clunky, it generally made a good fist of answering most of our questions.
While we’re still not totally convinced by the merits of having a listening device in our home, the quality of the audio and the usefulness of Skills have turned our heads. The kids also loved asking it to play music and tell jokes.
At $329 it’s many hundreds of dollars cheaper than top-quality ‘dumb’ speakers from Bowers & Wilkins, Sonos and Technics. While high-end audio aficionados can achieve better quality by combining a regular Echo or Google Home with a top-quality speaker, there’s much to like about this powerful, great-value, all-in-one package.