Amazon Echo Spot smart alarm clock
- Dimensions : 10.41 x 9.65 x 9.14cm
- Weight : 419g
- Release year : 2024
- Why we love it
- Good amount of microphones
- Decent sound
- Take note
- No indoor temperature sensor
The all-new Amazon Echo Spot kind of looks like the cheapest Echo in the range (the Echo Pop), but slightly chunkier and heavier, and with a screen that takes up roughly three-quarters of the top. It looks better-built than the Echo Pop, however, feeling stronger and sturdier.
While the 2.83in screen looks like a semicircle, it’s actually rectangular with a bezel that just makes it look like a semicircle – clever. It comes in three different colours – black, white and blue, but you can personalise the screen to an extent. The options are limited and don’t all look vastly different from each other, and it’s a shame there aren’t more. We’d love to be able to upload our own clock faces or have a wider variety of colours.
If you swipe down from the top of the screen and head to the settings, you can choose from six different clock faces and six colour themes. They all look broadly the same, but I liked the one with the little weather icon the most. We were able to set up a routine so that the screen gradually lit up when our alarm was about to go off in the morning, similar to a sunrise alarm clock.
It’s responsive and shows just enough information when you’re having a quick glance to check the time, ask about the weather or calendar events. When you ask for the weather, Alexa will bring up the right information at the right time. When it’s telling you the temperature, it will show the exact degrees, with a nice little pictogram of the weather (sun, in our case), and rotating to a visual indicator of the highest temperature and lowest temperature. Think of it as someone talking you through a quick weather report, with imagery that goes with it.
When we’re playing music, it shows the artist and song, as well as the album cover, and lets us pause, skip and go back a song using the touch screen display. Want to turn on your smart lights? Ask Alexa and it will bring up a light switch that you can toggle on and off on the display. It’s pretty seamless.
Like the Echo Pop, it features a slanting fabricated speaker-front and a plastic rear. Unlike the Echo Dot, however, it’s directional, and is designed to be placed in a corner or beside a wall so that you can view the screen. It does sound better than the Echo Pop, however, featuring the same 1.73in speaker as the 5th-generation Echo Dot.
There’s a good amount of bass, and it gets loud without rattling the speaker on the inside. Decent audio, with strong vocals, we still prefer the audio on the slightly more expensive 4th-generation base Echo, but it’s good for its size. We enjoyed that it had four microphones instead of three as well because it meant not having to shout across the room to get it to listen to us.
There are three physical buttons that turn off the microphone and adjust volume. While it can’t make video calls anymore, we found it a pretty useless feature on the old model anyway, given it had such a diminutive size. Working with Alexa, we were able to to set alarms, ask inane questions and program routines. It was snappy and fast, with no waiting in between responses. We could drop in on other Alexa devices and make audio calls, too.
The only thing the Echo Spot is missing is a temperature sensor, which the Echo Dot has. It’s mainly useful if you want to connect your smart home to your Alexa, so that it can turn on the fan or the radiator if your indoor temperature reaches a certain number.