Amazon Echo Dot review: Easy on your pocket and comes with new features

Smart home speaker is versatile and affordable — even if the upgrades are at a minimum

You can snooze alarms using tap gestures on the new Amazon Echo Dot and Dot with Clock. Photo: Amazon

Amazon's Echo Dot home speakers are now out, adding some new options for consumers who want to make their homes smarter and in tune with their routines.

The world's largest e-commerce marketplace is also the global leader in the industry, having held a more than 26 per cent market share in 2021, according to data from Statista. It comfortably holds that lead over Google, which had about 20 per cent, and Apple, whose HomePod accounts for only 10 per cent.

We are going to take a look at two of Amazon's new speakers — the Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock. The only difference between the two is that the latter has an LED display on the front, which shows info such as the time, the temperature and music track titles.

What's the difference?

Except for its weight — it's heavier by a dozen grams or so — the fifth-generation Echo Dots are virtual clones of their predecessors: you still get the cute spherical shape and fabric-woven exterior, with the four mainstay controls — volume up/down, action and microphone on/off — at the top, as well as the relaxing light ring along its base.

That is until you take a peek behind and see something missing: the 3.5mm audio port has been removed, leaving the power port as the sole hardware input on the device.

Now this is a hit-or-miss situation. The 3.5mm audio port gave the Echo Dot additional functionality, including connecting it to a more powerful speaker or for when you want to listen to a track or take a call in private.

Sure, you can pair a Bluetooth speaker with it, but that renders all 3.5mm accessories useless. Amazon could have at least replaced it with a USB-C port for those who are not fans of Bluetooth.

Lastly, it doubles as a good piece of table furniture. Its unassuming, minimalistic and diminutive nature means it can blend in well with just about any environment you put it in.

Functionality

Simply put, the Echo Dot can do a whole bunch of things you'd expect from a smart digital assistant, including taking calls, setting alarms, checking in with the latest news, commanding it to play music and controlling any smart home devices you may have connected to it. You trigger this, of course, by saying the magic word, or what is technically the wake word — “Alexa”.

The light ring emits six colours, each signalling different actions; blue means Alexa is listening, but nothing is triggered until it hears you say “Alexa”.

Red means the mic is off — pressing the mic on/off button will automatically make it red and emit a similar red light on the button — and it can't hear you. This prevents the accidental triggering of Alexa, as digital assistants, on occasion, may interpret certain mumblings as their trigger word.

Green means there's an incoming call, while yellow indicates you have a new notification, and you can command Alexa to answer or read. Orange comes up when the Echo Dot is in set-up mode or trying to connect to the internet, while purple means it's in do not disturb mode.

You may need to get specific to get the results you want.

For example, we asked Alexa “who won World Cup games” past midnight — a good few hours after all matches had ended — and it returned only two results out of four played the previous day; asking “who won World Cup games 'yesterday',” returned the full results.

We are not sure about the parameters involved in this, but this was the only miss we experienced in any of our queries. That might mean you need to mention everything you want in your query to get the most accurate results, but that would also remove the convenience of saying just a few words.

Amazon also added two new features, one of which is a sensor for room temperature. The other is built-in eero, which extends the range of your eero Wi-Fi network. Eero is a San Francisco-based company that makes network gear, and whose parent is Amazon.

And aside from the buttons on top, Amazon added tap gestures, using a new built-in accelerometer. This means you can simply tap on the Echo Dot to pause music, snooze an alarm or end a call.

However, it's such a good feature that it tends to be too good for its own good: if you try to reach out for a button and miss it, it would count an as an attempt to tap it, thereby triggering a response to that tap. It's the same for when you want to move the device and can't grasp it well. You may end up pausing your music or ending a call unintentionally, and many times.

However, you can keep this to a minimum by going to the Alexa app on your smartphone and disabling advanced tap control, or disabling it altogether.

It also supports Amazon Guard, which alerts you if it detects any suspicious sounds, but this is a US-only feature. Oh, and don't forget all the Easter eggs banter you can have with Alexa.

Connecting the Dots

Amazon removed the 3.5mm audio port in the new Echo Dot devices, which means pairing another speaker with them can be done only using Bluetooth. Photo: Amazon

Most modern speakers that share the same ecosystem can be connected with each other, and the Echo Dot is no exception. It can be done through the Alexa app. Aside from being able to use the digital assistant from anywhere you'd want at home, it can also serve as a sound system that can play the same music.

Be conscious, however, of how far apart they are placed, because if devices are too near to each other issuing an Alexa command might trigger the wrong device. A fix for this is setting the wake word for each device, which again can be done through the app; you can even customise it with the names of celebrities. Amazon also says that an unlimited number of Echo devices can be controlled from a single smartphone.

Meanwhile, sound quality is good, but we've observed that when the volume gets higher — and especially when it is at its peak — it doesn't sound as solid as you'd expect. Amazon put a larger speaker on the new Echo Dot and claims it has double the bass from the previous generation. While we cannot verify this since we have not reviewed the previous Echo Dots, we can say that we enjoyed the beats of the bass.

The verdict

Amazon says the new Echo Dots are its best in the line-up to date, and they've delivered with their simple-to-use nature and additional features. We do, however, lament the deteriorating sound quality at higher volumes, as well as the loss of a physical port to which you can quickly connect other more powerful speakers.

They do, however, seem like a steal, given their prices. Amazon can build on their shortcomings in future Echo devices, given that the new ones only bear token upgrades.