Amazon Echo Dot

Alexa the voice-controlled PA for just 50 quid, and you can plug in your own speaker

For the purposes of this review, it’ll be particularly easy to get straight to the point. Assuming you already own a speaker of some sort (and we’re thinking you already do), then you should buy the Amazon Echo Dot.

Our reservations about the full-size Amazon Echo (see our review in Issue 129), beautiful and full of promise though it is, were that it wasn’t amazing as a speaker for music, and it maybe felt a little over-priced. But, we’re pleased to say, there’s no way we could ever say the same about the much smaller Dot.

Speaker cornered

Granted, its onboard speaker is barely audible, but, unlike the Echo, it has a line out (which is 3.5mm only, if you want to quibble), so you can plug it into whatever you like. We tried it out with a Denon Heos, a Naim Mu-so Qb and the much cheaper Marshall Kilburn and the improvement in sound quality and volume over the Echo was very very marked.

Smaller is better

So, what is the Dot in comparison to its big sister, the Echo? Imagine the rotating portion of the full-sized Echo has been sawn off – that’s what the Echo Dot is like. It comes with a little speaker so the Alexa voice service, Amazon Echo’s AI hostess with the mostest, is able to reply to you when you need it to.