Alexa Might Not Be Able to Tell You What the Best Amazon Echo Speaker Is, But We Can

The fourth-generation Echo sports a spherical design, and it offers improved sound quality thanks to its 3-inch woofer, dual-firing tweeters, and added Dolby processing. Compared to past iterations, the newer model is faster at answering your requests, and it features a built-in Zigbee smart home hub, meaning it can be used to control connected home gadgets and appliances.

As you’d expect, the Echo is still the perfect companion for your budding smart home, so you can control your lights, locks, and music playback with your voice. The Echo serves as an intercom, and Alexa can tell you the weather, news, or traffic. It also works wonderfully for setting timers, getting answers to questions, creating calendar events, reminders, and shopping lists.

The Echo’s fabric shell comes in three colors — charcoal, glacier white, or twilight blue — which help it blend into any room.

More: The Best Alexa Accessories to Use With Your New Echo

The fourth-generation Echo Dot shares the same globe-like design as its sibling, the Echo, but measuring in at just 3.9 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall, it's much smaller. It comes in the same colors, charcoal, glacier white, or twilight blue, but it's half the cost.

We think the Echo Dot is the best bedside speaker since it’s equipped with a LED display that shows the time, alarms, and outdoor temperature. You can even tap the top of the Dot to snooze your alarm.

For those who find the clock too distracting, Amazon also sells a clock-free variant as well that's a little bit cheaper.

With its large 10-inch touchscreen, a 13MP camera (the best camera we've seen on a smart display), and a new rotating base, the recently improved Amazon Echo Show smart speaker adds a whole new way of interacting with Alexa.

The Echo Show 10 has a motorized base which allows its display to swivel itself to face you, so you always get a good view of the screen. It works wonderfully at keeping you in the frame during video calls — even if you're moving around in the kitchen.

In addition to being the ultimate video chat companion, the device is perfect for playing tunes, managing your daily routine, and controlling your connected home. The Amazon Echo Show can also play videos or stream live feeds from your wireless security cameras.

The Echo Show 8 slots in between the standard 10.1-inch screened Echo Show and the significantly smaller Echo Show 5. Like its smaller sibling, it features a privacy shutter for covering its camera when it's not in use. It does offer a much louder and fuller sound, though.

It's the perfect smart-home companion, so you can easily control your smart devices with your voice or a simple tap of your finger. It also works wonderfully for video calls or watching video on streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu.

Over the years, the Echo Dot has become Amazon's most popular smart speaker — probably due in part to its affordable price. This model is 70% louder than the second-generation Dot (but it's quieter than the newer, more expensive fourth-generation Dot), and it flaunts a slimmer UFO-shaped design with a fabric cover that comes in four different colors.

The Echo Dot will hear your voice commands via seven built-in microphones, and it can connect to a larger audio system via Bluetooth or a standard 3.5-millimeter audio cable for an even fuller sound. It's the cheapest Echo speaker money can buy.

The Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition includes a 1-year subscription to Amazon's Kids+ service, which gives your children access to ad-free radio stations, playlists, audiobooks, and games.

The smart speaker will automatically filter explicit songs from Spotify, and you can use it as an intercom to tell your children when it's time for bed or dinner. As you'd expect from an Echo, it still answers questions, controls smart home devices, and sets timers. This one gives kid-friendly answers, has integrated parental controls, and was designed to look like a tiger or panda.

However, like with any other kid-focused gadget, you should err on the side of caution before placing one in your child's room.

The Echo Studio offers a more immersive room-filling sound than every other Amazon speaker. It's equipped with five drivers and supports Dolby's Atmos tech to add more space, clarity, and depth to your music. To get more technical for the audiophiles out there (also known as fans of high-fidelity sound reproduction), this baby has three midrange 2-inch speakers, a 1-inch tweeter, and a large 5.25-inch woofer.

Like Sonos speakers, the Studio automatically senses the acoustics of your space. Compared to the Amazon Echo Plus, it has a larger footprint, a physical mic-mute switch, and the ability to be paired to your Fire TV for surround sound.

Editor's Note: Amazon recently launched the 2nd generation Echo Show 5, which costs $85. We plan to review it soon.

The smallest Echo Show rocks a 5.5-inch screen — nearly half the length of its sibling's display, making it an excellent alarm clock. The Show 5 allows you to control your connected thermostats, light bulbs, or video baby monitors with just a tap or swipe of your finger.

It also doubles as a smart speaker and has Alexa on board for asking questions or playing music. This option does have a camera for video calls. We're happy to see that it also features a camera shutter for blocking the lens when the camera is not in use. The Echo Show 5 was dubbed the smart alarm clock to get by The Verge.

The Echo Show 5 Kids is similar to the Echo Dot Kids Edition in the sense that it includes the same access to Amazon's Kids+ subscription service. The biggest difference is that your young ones can interact with the device not only with their voice but by using its integrated 5-inch touchscreen as well.

Kids can personalize the home screen with colorful clock themes, make video calls to their grandparents, ask Alexa for help with homework, or play games — after they're finished with their chores, of course! As you'd expect, the device allows parents to filter and curate content and limit screen time by enabling parental controls.

If you want to take Alexa with you on the go, opt for Amazon's latest pair of wireless earbuds. They feature active noise-reduction technology, along with water resistance.

These buds can play up to 5 hours of music at a time, but their charging case provides an extra 15 hours, making them a very travel-friendly option.

For gadget lovers who rely heavily on Alexa daily, consider opting for Amazon’s very own smart specs dubbed the Echo Frames. This unique pair of Bluetooth glasses is equipped with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, and with one push of a button, you can ask Alexa to do things like play your favorite song, turn on your living room lights, or start your robot vacuum cleaner.

The glasses come in three distinct colorways, including classic black, horizon blue, and modern tortoise. The glasses are lightweight and splash-resistant, and they can be used with your prescription lenses. They deliver 14 hours of battery life before needing to be recharged.

If you want to put Alexa in every room of your house but don't want to spend an arm and a leg doing so, we recommend picking up a few of these convenient devices. The Echo Flex is a tiny speaker and microphone that you plug right into your wall outlet.

It features a USB port at its bottom, so you can use it by your nightstand to charge your phone or plug in a few accessories like a night light or motion sensor.