A big speaker with even bigger features. It’s your own personal assistant you can put in almost any room in the home. Amazon revamped their first Echo with this 2nd Gen smartspeaker a few years ago.
You can speak to it and it will speak back. Alexa is the digital assistant Amazon built in to their Echo and not only can it tell you the weather, news, set alarms and play games, it can also learn new skills and interact with other smart devices you may have in the house.
Manufacturer Description
What is Amazon Echo?
Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, answer questions, make calls, send and receive messages, provide information, news, sports scores, weather and more. All you have to do is ask.
Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. It has seven microphones and beam-forming technology so it can hear you from across the room – even while music is playing. When you want to use Echo, just say the wake word, “Alexa”, and Echo lights up and responds to your request.
Voice control your music
The 2nd generation Amazon Echo has a 2.5” downward-firing woofer and 0.6” tweeter powered by Dolby, delivering crisp vocals and dynamic bass throughout the room. You can play music from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn and more. With Amazon Music, you can search by lyrics, time period or let Alexa pick the music for you. Learn more
"Alexa, play music in the office."
"Alexa, play top pop from the 90's."
Play in every room
Want to play music on an Echo in another room? Now with multi-room music, you can tell Alexa to play across your Echo devices—available for Amazon Music, Apple Music, TuneIn and Spotify; Bluetooth not supported. Tell Alexa to play jazz in the kitchen, top pop in the living room, or play the same song downstairs. Learn more
Voice-control your home
Use Amazon Echo to switch on the lamp before getting out of bed, turn up the thermostat while reading in your favourite chair or dim the lights from the couch to watch a film, all without lifting a finger.
Echo works with lights, locks, switches, TVs, thermostats and more from Philips Hue, WeMo, TP-Link, Sony, Hive, Nest, Samsung SmartThings, Netatmo, Tado° and more. Learn more about compatible smart home devices.
Connect with others
Instantly drop in on other rooms in your home or make an announcement to every room that has a compatible Echo device. Let everyone know dinner is ready, or remind the children that it’s bedtime. You can also stay in touch with friends and family with hands-free calling.
Far-field voice recognition
Tucked under the light ring is an array of seven microphones that use beam-forming technology and enhanced noise cancellation. The 2nd-generation Amazon Echo has improved wake-word performance to hear you ask a question from any direction, even in noisy environments or while playing music at loud volumes.
When you want to use Echo, simply say the wake word, “Alexa”, and Echo lights up and connects to the cloud, where the Alexa Voice Service recognises and responds to your request.
Echo has skills
Amazon Echo has thousands of skills and counting. Skills add even more capabilities such as ordering a pizza from Domino's, requesting a ride from Uber, tracking your fitness with Fitbit, getting recipe suggestions from Recipedia, and more. Create your own personal skills and custom responses with Alexa Skill Blueprints. To enable new skills, just ask Alexa.
New skills are being added all the time. You can also see ratings and reviews to learn what other customers are saying about the thousands of skills available in the Alexa App.
Better with Prime
Echo is even better with Prime. Order millions of products using only your voice - all voice orders include fast, free shipping, and Alexa can even track your delivery for you.
Prime members can also use their Echo to stream over 2 million songs with Prime Music.
Always getting smarter
Alexa, the brain behind Amazon Echo, updates through the cloud automatically and is continually learning, adding new functionality and skills. The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary and personal preferences.
We’ve recently added Alexa calling and messaging, multi-room music and reminders, along with skills from third-party developers.
Specifications
Size
148 x 88 x 88 mm
Weight
821 g
Wi-Fi Connectivity
Supports 802.11 a/b/g/n. Does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.
Bluetooth Connectivity
Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) support for audio streaming from your mobile device to Echo or from Echo to your Bluetooth speaker. Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) for voice control of connected mobile devices. Hands-free voice control is not supported for Mac OS X devices. Bluetooth speakers requiring PIN codes are not supported.
Audio
2.5” woofer and 0.6” tweeter
System Requirements
The Alexa App is compatible with Fire OS, Android and iOS devices and also accessible via your desktop browser. Certain skills and services are subject to change, may not be available in all areas and may require separate subscriptions or other fees.
Our Expert review of the Amazon Echo 2nd Gen
What would you use it for?
A big speaker with even bigger features. It’s your own personal assistant you can put in almost any room in the home. Amazon revamped their first Echo with this 2nd Gen a few years ago. You can speak to it and it will speak back. Alexa is the digital assistant Amazon built in to their Echo and not only can it tell you the weather, news, set alarms and play games, it can also learn new skills and interact with other smart devices you may have in the house.
What’s good about it?
It’s designed with multiple far-field microphones that enable far-field voice recognition. This simply means that you don’t have to stand next to the Echo for Alexa to be able to hear you. In fact we found our Echo picked up more or less a whisper of the “wake word” you need to speak to start interacting with your speaker. We didn’t have any other smart tech to test it with but the possibility of being able to turn lights on and off, setting the kettle to come on at a certain point or turning the telly on and off just buy asking Alexa and adding some smart plugs and smart light bulbs, it’s all very exciting!
Are there any drawbacks?
There is no monthly subscription fee required but you will need to have WiFi. For such a small speaker it’s difficult to demand too much of it in terms of sound performance so maybe we are being a little greedy but it is a tiny bit disappointing. Solving this with an audio output would be an idea, hint hint Amazon.
Are there alternative products available?
Other smart speakers are available from the big name players such as Google, Sonos, Bose and Apple but outside of Google and Amazon, most use Google Assistant, Siri or Alexa as their digital assistants.
