These aren’t audiophile speakers, but they’re great and so is this price.
I have two of these 4th gen (but with the clock). They’re great for filling your average room with music. One is in our spare room for guest use, another in the office. Who in their right mind would ever compare these to audiophile speakers is beyond me, but anyway…
Difference between 4th gen and 5th Gen dots.
4th Gen has a 3.5mm connection and is cheaper.
5th Gen has a bigger driver and a temperature sensor. Eero Mesh Wi-Fi extender built-in
This deal is on the edge for me because the 5th gen was $23 on prime day.
I currently have 2 show 5’s, 1 show 8, 1 4th Gen Echo, 1 original show and 4 3rd gen dots deployed.
I’m in similar. I’ve got 3 or 5 various Echo littered about my house. I want one with the clock. I also want to try a studio. If I hadn’t just got the Show 5 this would be a no brainer. The Show 5 feels and looks really great. The small screen and lower sound quality make it not as good as this for my uses.
To the not calling it audiophile? I said it was great, and it is. I don’t often say that about speakers and certainly not at a $20 price point. No need to be condescending.
We have 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen Echo Dots, amongst a range of other Echo devices.
2nd gen: good for dusty, dirty environments like a shop or the garage since they are easy to clean. But their sound doesn’t get very loud, so in one case, we have it driving an old stereo receiver with decent speakers. Handy in cases where you already have a USB port to power it, or even go portable with a USB battery pack, since its power port is standard Micro-USB.
3rd gen: has much improved sound, although certainly not “musical”. And maintains an easy to clean hard surface on the top at least. First Dot to require a proprietary Amazon wall wart, likely due to its more power hungry improved audio power output. <—- Still our favorite Dot.
4th gen: ours is sitting in the closet collecting dust like its more bulky globular, fabric covered form factor wants. It simply takes up more room with zero benefits. We tested it against a 3rd gen Dot on various streams and could hear little difference. It also seemed to respond less reliably to Alexa commands.
If you want nice sounding Echo devices, skip the Dots:
- Regular Echo, 3rd gen or later (the “2nd gen Echo Plus” is actually a 3rd Gen, not that you’d know by screwy Amazon naming conventions… also looking at you, Echo Show 10, the 1st gen, that Amazon calls 2nd gen.)
- Echo Show 8 can be a bit bass-boomy
- Echo Show 10 can also be a bit bass-boomy
- Echo Studio. Puts the rest of the Echo lineup to shame, sound-wise.
Of course if you’re after truly good sound quality spend a lot of more money on a streaming-capable receiver and speakers of your choice. We have a couple Denon AVR’s and they play very nicely with Alexa.
I use these in pairs, it’s a decent sound for kitchen, workshop, etc. Easy to pair in the Alexa app
I recently connected two as stereo speakers in my master bath. Im very happy with them. Would recommend.
How much to buy your ball of dust in the closet? $10 shipped? Little more than half price here.
I have/had nice stereo equipment. To me what makes these great is the ability to play music on all of them throughout the house. Walk in and Spotify from the truck kicks on throughout and it isn’t overbearing like turning your home theater up loud renough to hear it everywhere.
Kind of missing the point - it has nothing to do with covering the home with streaming ability. We simply prefer the 3rd gen Dots vs 4th gen, which sound the same and more reliably respond to Alexa commands. (Although, Alexa in general has severely deteriorated over the past 8-12 months. Very frustrating.)
We used to have mostly Dots around the house. Now it is mostly 3rd gen Echos as well as Show 8’s and 10’s in various rooms and the Alexa-capable Denon AVRs on two floors. They all sound dramatically better than any Dot. We paid as little as $20 for the Echos, used.
Paid $23 for the 4th gen “ball of dust in the closet”. And anywhere from free to $25 for our 3rd gen Dots. It’s isn’t that the 4th gen Dot is junk - we simply prefer the 3rd gen. And our home isn’t a McMansion, so there are only so many Alexa devices we can deploy. We also have 3rd gen Dots sitting in the closet as backups since we swapped some of them for nicer sounding Echo devices.
BTW, while you can play streams “everywhere” or “move music to here”, we really like our Amazon Tap, solid sound but also completely portable, even into the back yard or bathroom where we’d prefer not to have a device living permanently due to moisture and a shortage of power receptacles.
To each, their own, the nice thing about Echo devices - there’s something for everyone and every budget.
The 5th gen Echo Dot is currently $23 at Woot mother Amazon. Perhaps leading to the October 10/11 Prime day. Echo Auto 2nd gen also discounted from $50/55 to $35. Seems less common for it to discount. But reviews show it doesn’t appear to be any better vs 1st gen Echo Auto.
I don’t have any Echo any version, but have been casually interested. I wondered why I would buy this 4, when the 5 2022 edition is $22.99 at Amazon?
I have 2 echo taps I use frequently, they were great devices but discontinued long ago. Wish they still made those, but with the massive staff layoffs in the Alexa department not hoping for many new innovations. I just noticed that Alexa’s voice changed slightly very recently when they added AI capability.
I have two of these that I got for free brand new from Amazon. I don’t remember how that happened. I got one hooked up. It does the job. I mainly use it to wake up and get stock quotes. Sometimes I run music through it, and it isn’t bad for such a small driver. These things can be useful.
I’m in for 3. I have a Gen 2, Gen 4, and a Gen 5. My Gen 4 and Gen 5 are both extending my eero WiFi network, so I figured these could help there as well as relegating the Gen 2 for garage duty only. The hockey puck look doesn’t rate high on the WAF scale. Wife wanted two more for other rooms and I said three more and they have to be blue.