Top pick
The fourth-generation Amazon Echo sounds good and works with most smart-home devices, including Zigbee-compatible ones.
The Echo (4th Gen) is the latest version of the original smart speaker, with all the Alexa functions (besides the ones limited to smart displays, like recipes) as well as impressive sound for its size and price. The fourth-generation Echo has a more direct driver design than previous generations, for better sound. And it has Dolby processing to enhance the stereo effect from a single speaker, replacing the previous 360-degree audio design found in older models. (If you want an authentic stereo setup, you can opt to buy two Echoes and pair them.)
It sounds good for its small size. This speaker includes two 0.8-inch (20 mm) tweeters instead of one. Its 3-inch (76.2 mm) woofer is also placed at the top of the speaker instead of the bottom. The upside of the dual tweeters is that the new Echo delivers a reasonably effective stereo effect for a single speaker. But that direct driver design means the sound quality of the speaker, as well as the stereo effect, can shift depending on where you are in the room. This Echo also plays slightly louder than previous versions, and it sounds pretty clean at high volumes. It also has the ability to dynamically equalize its sound based on the ambient conditions in the room, a feature Amazon calls Automatic Room Adaptation. An equalizer—which you can adjust by voice command (“Alexa, turn up the bass”) or in the app—allows you to tweak the bass, treble, and midrange settings to your liking.
Being a great listener is important in any relationship, and we found the Echo meets the challenge, even with some ambient noise in the room. When it is playing at full volume, you may have to walk over to the Echo and press the microphone button to get its attention. But at normal to moderately high volume, it will usually catch your voice through the din.
You can opt to pair the Echo with your smartphone via Bluetooth, if you want to play songs stored there, or to use podcast apps or a music service Alexa doesn’t support. You can also associate an Echo with any other Echo devices in your home to work together as a multiroom audio system, similar to how Sonos systems operate, though the experience is not as seamless. That allows you to play the same audio in several or all of your Echo speakers at the same time.
It’s great for voice control of smart-home devices. If you want to control the greatest number of smart-home devices, then this Echo is one to consider because it includes a built-in Zigbee wireless hub that connects to a wider variety of things than a Wi-Fi–only Echo like the Dot does. It also has an ambient temperature sensor that you can use to control smart-home routines, such as turning a fan on when the room hits 75 degrees. However, we didn’t find its temperature readings to be particularly accurate—it tended to take a reading and stick with it for several days, despite the temperature changing throughout the day.
Upgrade pick
Amazon’s best-sounding speaker includes Dolby Atmos and lossless music-streaming abilities.
The Amazon Echo Studio is Amazon’s biggest and best-sounding Alexa speaker, and it has a correspondingly larger price tag (twice as much as the standard Echo), on a par with that of a Sonos One (which it rivals in sound quality and beats in functionality). Powering its audio are five speaker drivers: a front-firing 1-inch tweeter, two side-firing and one upward-firing 2-inch midrange drivers, and a 5.25-inch down-firing woofer. The result is far better bass punch than you’ll get with other Echos. You can also pair it with a Fire TV to serve as a soundbar, of sorts, which will be an improvement over any built-in TV speakers (though probably not better than an actual soundbar).
This speaker can stream Amazon’s lossless audio files. To rock this feature, you have to pay an additional cost for HD high-resolution music service on top of Prime Music. The Echo Studio also supports Dolby Atmos, which adds a more immersive height effect to sound. Though it doesn’t support direct streaming of Atmos-mixed music from Tidal, it does support a library of 3D-audio tracks from Amazon Music HD, which are mastered in both Dolby Atmos and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio spatial audio codec. The Echo Studio can also upmix stereo music into a simulation of 3D audio, though in our testing, we’ve found the quality of this upmixing can be a little inconsistent. Amazon has also rolled out a software update for the Echo Studio with spatial audio processing technology, which we’ll be testing soon.
This is the best Echo for audio. When it comes to power and performance, the Echo Studio has no equal among the lineup of Echo devices. Yet even when cranked to high volume, it could hear and respond quickly to voice commands—a strength we attribute to its being a native Echo speaker (versus a third-party one). The Echo Studio also has a feature similar to the Sonos’s Trueplay; it’s called Automatic Room Adaptation, and it continuously auto-tunes sounds based on the acoustics of the room in which it’s playing. Unlike Sonos, however, the Studio doesn’t require the use of a smartphone.
If you’re interested in a multiroom speaker setup, we recommend pairing an Echo Studio with the fourth-gen Echo (and other Echo devices); you can read more in our multiroom wireless speaker guide.
