If only every guest could slide into your life as smoothly as an Amazon Echo.
Amazon’s smart speaker, home to its digital assistant, Alexa, found a place in my home years ago. The 9.25-inch-tall black cylinder sits on my hutch, answering questions about the weather, sports, news, adjusting the climate on the first and second floor of my home, setting alarms, checking my schedule, and even playing games.
Over time, it’s woven its way into more and more of my daily activities. I don’t think my story is that different from millions of other people around the world who’ve welcomed home the Echo, the Echo Dot, and the Amazon Tap. So it’s not surprising Amazon now faces a heap of competition from the biggest tech guns on the planet: Apple, Google and, yes, Microsoft.
But Amazon's head start means it's had ample time to make its Echo speakers even better. And nowhere is that more clear than in its second-generation Echo.
More power in a smaller package
The latest full-sized Echo is arguably the least exciting member of the Echo family, which now includes the camera-equipped $229.99 Echo Show and the $199.99 "style assistant" Echo Look. But, at $99.99, the second-gen Echo offers the most bang for your buck.
The original Echo was a black (or white) plastic cylinder that I struggled to make mesh with my home décor, but grew to love despite its awkward looks. At 5.9 inches tall, the new Echo is considerably shorter, and it can slip on and off different covers as easily as you change shirts.
The options include oak, walnut, charcoal, heather gray or sandstone fabric, and silver. Notably absent is pure black or white. My test unit, which was covered in a subtle gray fabric, also arrived with a walnut covered (fake wood, of course) shell.
To swap coverings, I just held onto the Echo’s body and pushed a round rubber indent on the base. The body easily released from the shell. I slid it all the way off and then slid the walnut covering on, which seated with a satisfying click. Ultimately, I switched back to the gray fabric because it has the benefit of hiding the Echo’s 360-degree speaker grille.
It's still not as eye-catching as the Google Home or HomePod, but it's a big improvement over the original Echo. With the fabric shell on, the new Echo looks more than ever like a run-of-the-mill Bluetooth speaker. Even the Echo’s signature volume ring is gone. In exchange, the new Echo gives you physical volume control buttons on top. The other two buttons, carried over from the first-hen Echo, are for stop/reset and microphone mute.
There’s also evidence on top of the significant changes Amazon made inside the Echo. There are seven tiny dots on the cover: little holes for the powerful far-field microphones, which replace the circular grille on the original Echo. But more on that later.
Setting up the Amazon Echo is a simple affair, eased by the device’s habit of talking you through any potential rough spots. Moments after I plugged in the Echo, the signature light ring glowed orange as Alexa piped up and told me to open the Alexa app on my phone. Together, they guided me through a quick and painless setup. Afterwards, the color ring went dark as the Echo waited for its first instruction.
I started by simply asking for my news brief and then the weather. These were unremarkable interactions. After all, it’s the hardware Amazon updated, not Alexa. Well, actually, as a cloud-based digital voice assistant, Alexa is updated daily. It gets smarter, faster, and more useful as third-parties add more and more skills. Those skills let Alexa tap into other smart devices like the Nest thermostats I have in my house.
Amazon’s Alexa app also connects the new Echo device to other Amazon Alexa-powered hardware, like my Amazon Fire TV. When I said "Alexa, Watch Transparent," My Fire TV turned on and started playing the first episode of the show. With Alexa’s Routines capability, a single command or phrase like “Alexa, It’s Movie Time,” can launch a collection of smart tasks like lowering the lights and turning on Fire TV.
Even if you don't have any smart home devices connected to your account, you can still benefit from the feature. Saying "Alexa, Good Morning," for example can prompt the assistant to tell you the current weather and traffic conditions, read the news, play a specific Spotify station.
Can you hear me now?
For my review of the new Echo, though, I tried to focus my tests on how Amazon’s hardware changes impacted the device's ability to hear me and play my music. When I was in the same room, speaking at a normal volume, the Echo heard me every time.
I decided to make it more difficult and stepped out of the living room and into the hallway. Then I whispered, “Alexa.” The top of the device glowed blue with a green highlight pointing in my direction (it always points toward the sound of my voice.) Then I asked, “Are the Yankees playing tonight?” Alexa heard and gave me schedule for that night’s ALCS game.
These conversations can also feel much more natural, thanks to Amazon's new "follow-up mode." When the setting is enabled, Alexa will keep listening for up to five seconds after your last request so you can keep asking questions without saying "Alexa" over and over agin. You'll still see the blue light ring, indicating the speaker is listening, so you'll know when you don't need the wake word.
The only time the Echo struggled was when I started playing a station from Amazon Music and then asked Alexa to play a game. Alexa heard my request fine and asked if I wanted to play Categories. I said yes, and she launched into the game. For some reason, though, she kept the music going. It was slightly muted, but not completely.
I couldn’t follow the game, so I asked Alexa to stop the music. Instead, Alexa was stuck on the game and kept telling me she didn’t get my response. Finally, I just hit the physical stop button.
In terms of the sound itself, the Echo has improved speakers and new Dolby audio processing, and the result is literally music to my ears. The 360-degree audio, powered by a 0.6-inch tweeter and a 2.5-inch down-firing woofer, is louder, richer (with more bass) and clearer than the original Echo. Overall, I still prefer the audio from the Sonos One Smart speaker, but the new Echo’s audio is far better than just about anything else at its price.
In addition to better sound, the Echo can provide smarter sound. To be fair, the feature is enabled through the Alexa app, but the ability to control all my Echo smart speakers through one Echo device is cool and useful. In the app, I added the new Echo and my original Echo to a group called Everywhere. Now, when I tell Alexa to play David Bowie music everywhere, she asks me if I want to play Bowie music on the group called “Everywhere.” When I confirm, every speaker in the group plays the same song.
The Echo is also a capable communication device. When I asked it to call Ray (our Senior Tech Correspondent Raymond Wong), it confirmed I wanted to contact Ray Wong and then dialed his number. A moment later Ray picked up and we were chatting. The sound quality on phone calls is decent (it's dependent, in part, on connection quality), but I didn’t have to raise my voice for him to hear me and Ray’s voice came through clearly.
It's also now capable of sending text messages, though it's to as easy to use as voice calling. You can ask Alexa to send a message -- either by reading off a phone number or naming someone from your contacts -- but if the person you're trying to reach hasn't opted-in to receiving texts from Alexa the feature won't work, which is kind of a bummer.
Overall, I like the new Echo even more than the old ones because, in addition to hosting a useful voice assistant, it's now cheaper, louder, smaller, and better at blending into my home décor. And, most importantly, it's an even better listener.
With contributions from Karissa Bell
Note: This review originally published on Oct 26, 2017, and was updated on July 10 28, 2018.
Topics Alexa Amazon Amazon Echo Reviews Mashable Choice
