Amazon Echo Studio

Amazon's most powerful smart speaker is a home speaker with big sound and the Alexa voice assistant built in

SPECIFICATIONS

Drivers 3 x 51mm midrange speakers, 25mm tweeter, 133mm woofer Frequency range 10Hz - 20kHz Connectivity 3.5mm jack, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth Audio features Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, automatic room adaptation Voice assistant Alexa Dimensions 206x175mm Weight 3.5kg

Amazon has quite an extensive portfolio of smart speakers now, ranging from the cheap and cheerful Echo Dot to the peoplepleasing Amazon Echo. But the new Amazon Echo Studio, their all-singing all-dancing home speaker, is its best yet, offering the most immersive sound.

The latest iteration of the Amazon Echo Studio looks almost identical to the last. Because it's basically an inflated version of the Amazon Echo, you'll need to find a spot with plenty of room for it. We picked the corner of a desk but it'd look just as at home on a side table or on a shelf.

The actual design won't be for everyone. A meshed fabric covering wraps around the curved edges of the speaker with a gap stretching across the width of the base. It also has a big circular panel around the top that houses the control buttons and has a light ring on the inside, which you can barely see at all when it's not lit up.

Like other Echo devices, there are four buttons on the control panel: two volume controls, a microphone mute button and the action button. Each one triggers the light ring, which turns red when the mic is switched off, tells you the volume level around the ring in white, goes orange in setup mode and lights up blue when Alexa is listening out for you.