Amazon Echo Dot with Clock (5th Gen) review: A little smarter ball

Amazon’s Echo Dot has long been a power player in the smart home, and the fifth-generation Echo Dot maintains the status quo while adding a few new tricks. The latest Echo Dot doesn’t reinvent the wheel (or ball?), but it maintains its iconic status as an affordable and thoroughly convenient portal into the Alexa universe.

The Echo Dot’s move from the third-generation puck design to the fourth-generation sphere is Amazon’s biggest design change in its entry-level smart speaker. The fifth model looks the same as its predecessor, with almost identical dimensions and controls. But it does add some new features, including new sensors and a sound upgrade.

As with its predecessor, there are several versions of the fifth-generation Dot, including the Echo Dot with a clock (which I’m reviewing here), a kids-edition Dot with animal designs on the outside, and a cheaper standard model without a clock. . . Whichever model you choose, the Dot is still one of the best smart speakers you can buy.

What’s new in the fifth generation?

The most notable new feature on Amazon’s latest Echo Dot is the temperature sensor. You can now ask Alexa to check the temperature in a given room, which is quick and a nice addition to outdoor weather queries. It’s even better for those with compatible smart thermostats, from Amazon’s in-house smart thermostat to Google’s Nest or a variety of third-party models, letting you adjust heating or cooling with voice commands or schedule routines in the app. Alexa to do it. automatically.

Also new is a built-in accelerometer for gesture controls. You can tap your Echo Dot to hit snooze if you’re using it as an alarm clock, for example, as well as to stop timers, pause music, and end calls. This can be useful if you’re in a hurry, although asking Alexa is so quick that it might not save you much time.

While I wasn’t able to test it directly with the 4th-gen Echo Dot, the latest model is also surprisingly fast in responding to Alexa commands. It pairs well with Apple’s lightning-fast second-generation HomePod at pausing audio in Apple Music (once you’ve enabled it in the Alexa app), and it’s even a hair faster than Apple’s pricier device on Spotify.

The fifth-generation Echo Dot with Clock also adds the ability to view other information by scrolling across its blimp-style digital display, including weather information and song titles. (Thankfully, this eventually returns to the clock face, as it gets a bit distracting over time.)

A simple setup procedure

The Echo isn’t as easy to get started with as Apple’s HomePod and HomePod Mini, which require little more than walking to the speaker with your iPhone. That’s the detraction of a speaker that isn’t interconnected to your mobile device in a closed ecosystem.

On the other hand, the Echo speakers are not only much more compatible with third-party devices and smart skills, but you also don’t need a specific smartphone to get started, just the Alexa app for Android or iPhone and an Amazon account. The app quickly guides you through setup, and after entering your Wi-Fi password, you’ll be up and running in minutes.

Those new to Alexa may encounter some learning curves in the app when it comes to locating the Add Device tab, but overall it’s a quick and painless process.

All Alexa Smart

Alexa has a reputation as the most useful and versatile smart home system around, and the Echo Dot gives you the keys to that kingdom for just $50 (for the non-clock model).

Once you’re online, you’ll be introduced to some of Alexa’s many “skills,” some of which work better than others, as anyone familiar with smart assistants could guess. Alexa started by blocking my voice recognition to offer personalized information (you can add up to six individual users). The assistant also suggested her latest ability, “Smart Tub”, which, she explained, allows her to regulate the chemicals and temperatures of the hot tub when third-party devices from Jacuzzi.com are used.

Maybe it was all the weirdness of ChatGPT during the week of my review, but this was one of those spooky smart home moments, as I was talking to a rep about an issue with our Costco hot tub an hour earlier. The speaker was still in the box at the time, so pin it down to a creepy coincidence. I’m glad the Echo speakers offer a physical mute button to quickly cut the microphone off whenever you want.

Fears of Skynet’s eventual reign aside, Dot enables a world of convenience via Alexa, especially if you add other smart devices. For example, like the fourth-generation Dot, the fifth-generation’s built-in motion sensors can be programmed to turn on compatible smart lights when you enter a room. For Eero Wi-Fi router owners, the new Dot can also be used as a mesh Wi-Fi extender, improving Wi-Fi hotspots in larger homes. (This feature was also recently added to the fourth-generation Echo speaker, and Amazon says it’s coming to the fourth-generation Echo Dot as well.)

There are plenty of other ways to use Dot with Alexa, of course, including the ability to make calls to anyone on your contact list, make intercom calls to other Echo devices in your home, create shopping lists, play games, check your calendar, and connect and control an ever-growing variety of other devices, from robotic vacuums to Fire TV streaming devices to garage door openers. You can also connect two Echos as a stereo pair, or add more as part of a whole-home audio system.

Thanks to Amazon’s compliance with Matter, a unified protocol designed to connect devices in smart ecosystems like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, it’s also becoming easier than ever to connect any smart device to an Echo speaker. While the Dot works well as a standalone smart speaker for playing your favorite tunes, the more you invest in your smart home aspirations, the more you’ll get out of it.

Solid sound for a small ball.

The Echo Dot has always been the speaker to buy if you’re looking first and foremost for a great way to kick start Alexa on a budget or spread out a large number of smart speakers throughout your home. Music is an afterthought at this size and price, and especially with all the other things the Dot can do, that’s understandable.

That said, Amazon wants you to know it’s still working, and the fifth-gen Dot gets improved sonic abilities, including a slightly larger driver inside. This is usually a sound quality to listen to while you work, but it does a great job for that purpose, particularly in the middle of the sound where most of his favorite instruments excel.

The upper bass and midrange are warm and relatively clear, allowing strings, drums, and vocals to pop with nice flavor. The lower bass frequencies don’t make the cut, and the speaker also seems to shed quite a bit of the higher frequencies, which means that instrumentation like cymbal crashes and synth whines sound jangly and resonant. But distortion is minimal, and there’s a bit more breathing room for instruments to expand than on previous Dots I’ve heard.

Keeping expectations in check is key – there’s not much you can do to combat the physics. With that in mind, I think most will be satisfied with the latest Dot as a podcast and musical companion in the bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom. It’s especially useful for those times when you just want to play a few songs without having to track down your phone.

Should you buy the fifth-generation Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker?

Standing on the shoulders of the smart speaker giants, the 5th-gen Echo Dot is a versatile little smart home portal, with quick access to Alexa, relatively good sound quality, and some useful new built-in features that make it worthwhile. worth considering compared to its predecessor. .

This isn’t a “must upgrade” situation for those with a 4th-gen Echo Dot, and those looking for better sound quality in a speaker that does pretty much everything the new Dot can do will want to consider investing in the 4th most expensive. gen generation Echo speaker. But if you’re looking to get the best budget smart speaker, and especially if you want the convenience of clocking in, the fifth-gen Dot is a great buy.