Amazon’s latest spherical magicball delivers improved sound quality and a ton of useful features. Read our 4th Gen Echo Dot review to find out more.Â
The original speaker of Amazon 4th Gen Echo Dot made a comeback with a completely different look and many features. Its predecessor earlier had a cylindrical shape design that has now been modified into an exotic spherical design. The all-new 4th Gen Echo Dot provides high-quality audio performance and supports Zigbee devices and Alexa assistant. These features are much more than any smart speaker can offer, and that too at a feasible rate.
Echo Dot 4th Gen Review: Features and Design
The near-sphere 4th Gen Echo measures 5.7 inches wide and 5.2 inches tall and is available in three different colors – white, blue, and black. Amazon claims that the materials used to build the Echo speaker, such as aluminum and fabric, are 100 percent recyclable. The ring light that was located on the top in the previous model now exists on the base. It offers a noticeable indirect glow of blue light whenever Alexa wakes up. The top section has volume up and volume down buttons, buttons for Alexa, and a mute mic button. The speaker’s back section holds a 3.5mm audio output and the power adapter connector.
Below the fabric, there is a 0.8-inch front-firing dual tweeter and a woofer of 3 inches, from which the speaker offers Dolby audio. The tweeters have drivers of the same size, just like the Third Gen Echo and Echo Plus. However, there are two tweeters instead of a single one. Moreover, similar to the Echo Plus, the 4th Gen Echo has an in-built smart home hub. The Echo speaker supports Amazon Sidewalk, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and it is also the Zigbee hub. This enables the user to expand the variety of low-bandwidth devices.
Audio Performance
This little spherical device can be smaller in size. However, as the dual tweeters and woofer are more prominent, it offers much power. The speaker doesn’t provide floor-vibrating bass, and the low frequencies also have a smoothly balanced sound. The enhanced bass can be heard in the track “Roundabout” by Yes.
The 4th Gen Echo speaker can’t offer Nest Audio’s high-frequency skill; hence the vocals and string texture doesn’t stand out much. However, notably, one can observe more response in the low-mids and lows. The Echo Studio of $200 delivers a powerful audio experience, but it is costly. At $100, the standard Echo speaker is superb.
Access to Alexa
A user can access Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant effortlessly with the 4th Gen Echo speaker. After waking up, the voice assistant uses the wake word to fulfill your assigned task. In general, Alexa offers weather information, sports scores, and can also play songs from Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Music, and SiriusXM. Its features also include efficient support with several smart home devices and Zigbee devices, making calls with different Alexa devices effortless.
The Echo speaker includes Amazon’s AZ1 Neural Edge processor, a chip specifically developed for machine learning. Amazon claims that the processor allows new features much responsive speech recognition. Alexa being an efficient voice assistant, the device’s language recognition is somewhat inflexible, and it needs particular syntax for a few commands. Hopefully, Alexa would be made to talk easily over time with the AZ1 processor. Besides, Google assistant delivers much flexibility in language recognition that makes it possible to speak casually.
Amazon’s 4th Gen Echo speaker is a powerful version of the previous model with features to manage smart home devices. It is not a more significant upgrade to throw out your third-gen Echo. However, if you want to replace a device like Echo dot or wish to purchase a brand new smart speaker to offer round sound in a little device, this is the speaker you should go for.