AMAZON ECHO
The new Echo is the best yet for features, but isn’t necessarily the best smart speaker for everyone
Offering super sound and an integrated smart home hub
From $79 amazon.com.au
With the latest Amazon Echo, we have the biggest design change in the six years since the Alexa smart speaker first appeared on the scene: cylinders are out, spheres are in.
We’re going to be honest: we preferred the old cylindrical design for the Echo. The sphere shapes that Amazon has gone all-in on in 2020 look a bit too much like a fancy paperweight or a pet toy to us, though the acoustics do seem to be slightly better with the shift in shape.
Something else we’re not particularly happy about is the switching of the status light from the top to the bottom of the device. If you’re standing up and the Echo is on a low table, you have to duck down to make sure the speaker is listening.
The Echo comes with a 3-inch woofer and two 0.8-inch front-firing tweeters and the combination works really well: this is a speaker that can fill a room with top quality sound no problem at all. Bass is particularly well pronounced, and it’s certainly a better level of fidelity than you would get from the smaller speakers on the market.
Amazon has upgraded the Echos to support multi-room audio, so you can carry your tunes from one room to another and set up two as a stereo pair. You can also use this and other Echos as a sound system for your Fire TV device as well, while a 3.5mm audio input socket gives you even more flexibility. In terms of sticking on your tunes, Amazon would prefer you to use Amazon Music, but it’ll also work with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. You can also connect to the Echo from other devices via Bluetooth.
This new Echo also comes with a Zigbee smart home hub built-in – that means that Zigbee-compatible devices (like Philips Hue lights) can be controlled without the need for a separate hub plugged into your router. You can still control a huge number of smart home devices via Alexa without it, but its inclusion makes the connection to certain devices a bit simpler and more convenient – you can just ask Alexa to search for compatible devices nearby, and they’ll be connected automatically.
There’s no doubt the fourth-gen Echo is the best sounding and the most capable yet – though maybe not the best looking. If you’re fine with the scaled down bowling ball design, it’s a great smart speaker that offers decent value for money and superb audio.