Comparing the Best Alexa Speakers
Honorable Mentions
While I wouldn’t call these smart speakers my absolute favorites from Amazon, they have some excellent qualities that make them stand out among the vast lineup of Echo models.
The Echo Studio (2nd Gen) is the best Alexa speaker for sound quality. This is the second version of the Echo Studio to be our audiophile pick. The current version is a similar size to the old Echo (4th gen), but the musical power on this speaker is almost ridiculous. It filled my entire second floor’s long great room with music, and I didn’t even need to reach the highest level of volume to pull it off. Honestly, I’m almost afraid to use it at full blast. Not only was it loud, but clear and delivered a nice amount of blast, beautifully playing soft tones of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and the piano riffs of “Dark Blue” by Jack’s Mannequin with its three 1.5-inch drivers, plus a 3.75-inch woofer. The harmonizing of “What Is This Feeling?” by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo sounded beautiful, too. If you’re looking for big sound in an Alexa box, this is it. It’s a similar size to the Apple HomePod, but I like the sound much better and it’s cheaper, too. You’ll also get a built-in smart home hub, spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, tap controls like the Echo Dot Max, and early access to Alexa+ right away.
The Echo Spot (2nd Gen) is the best Alexa speaker for bedside tables. The Echo Spot returned in 2024 after a few years of discontinuation, and it’s a great little bedside companion thanks to its half-circle screen that displays the time, plus any alarms you have set are also visible under the main time. You can customize the clock with a couple of different color and face options, and the screen dims nicely when the lights are out to a gentle red that’s easy to read without lighting up the room. I like asking for alarms set to my latest playlist or some lo-fi jams, and it’s easy to set that up with a voice request. Unlike the Echo Shows, it doesn’t have a distracting, constantly moving slideshow that would be annoying for the bedroom, nor does it display ads or have a built-in camera. (Nobody wants a rogue camera in their bedroom.) It does not have fantastic sound, but it’s plenty loud for an alarm or casual listening while you get dressed in the morning.
The Echo Dot Kids (5th Gen) is the best Alexa speaker for kids. Do your kids really need their own Alexa speaker? That’s up to you. This special edition of the Echo Dot is nearly identical to the fifth-gen Dot above, but it has easy-to-use parental controls that allow you to set time limits, filter explicit content, and review activity. The owl- or dragon-themed sphere comes with a year of Amazon Kids+, which includes thousands of Audible books and other special games and features. After that, you’ll be charged $3 per month. Alexa can help your kids spell, play their favorite music, or—via another speaker in your house—remind them of dinner time.
More Alexa (and Alexa-Compatible) Speakers
There are a lot of Echo devices out there, and some third-party speakers that are Amazon Alexa–compatible. Here’s every Alexa smart speaker we’ve tried and what we thought of it.
Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen) With Clock for $60: I like this version of the older Echo Dot that adds an LED clock to the front of the speaker, and was thrilled to see it in stock again last year. The LED clock can also display information like the weather when you ask Alexa questions. It’s once again temporarily out of stock as of this writing, and has had spotty availability for the past year or so. Still, it’s a good find when it’s available.
Amazon Echo Hub for $180: The Amazon Echo Hub is similar to an Echo Show, but without the speaker. Instead it’s a thin device that feels a bit like a tablet, designed to be mounted on the wall (or placed on a separately purchased stand, which is how I used it) and used to control your smart home devices. It’s a great choice for anyone who wants something focused on smart home control only. You can still ask Alexa questions and even play music, but the thin speakers aren’t worth playing music from. But you can tell your Echo Hub to play music on a different set of speakers, and even set up default speakers to work with it. It’s a great companion device if you already have a smart home setup.
Amazon Echo Pop for $40: The Echo Pop is a perfectly fine little speaker, and the cutest one in Amazon’s lineup. Does it have great sound? No. It’s fine enough for background tunes or if you’re limited to a dorm room, but you’ll get much better sound for a similar size from the Echo Dot (but you’ll pay a little more, and you won’t get as cute of colors)!
Amazon Echo Show 5 (3rd Gen) for $90: This smart display is another just-fine option, but it’s too small to be a great display, and the included camera makes it a no for a bedside table; better to go with the above Echo Spot or an Echo Dot.
Amazon Echo Show 8 (4th Gen) for $180: I usually love an Echo Show 8, but this model didn’t have the same sound quality as the older model. If you’re going to get one of Amazon’s new displays, you’re better off getting the Echo Show 11 ($220) for the same experience with a slightly larger screen (while it’s a 3-inch difference, it doesn’t feel that big) and better sound.
Amazon Echo Show 15 (2nd Gen) for $300: This smart display is a good display, but it clearly wants to double as a TV and isn’t very good at it yet. I’m hoping we see better TV-related performance in the future to make it worth adding to a kitchen or office. It does a great job with widgets, though, thanks to the massive 15.6-inch screen. There’s also the larger Echo Show 21 ($400), which is essentially the same thing but larger.
JBL Authentics 200 for $360: This JBL smart speaker supports both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, letting you switch between them for different tasks without changing your preference in the app. That makes this speaker particularly appealing for folks with a sprawling collection of smart products from both.
Sonos Era 100 for $189: If you’re looking for a speaker that can talk to Alexa but isn’t necessarily made by Amazon, the Sonos Era 100 is a great option. We just wish we liked the Sonos app better. You can catch our entire guide to the Sonos ecosystem here.
What’s Alexa+?
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Amazon has rolled out the new-and-improved Amazon Alexa, named Alexa+, which is built on generative AI and promises a more powerful assistant that can handle more conversational topics and requests. It’s available for a free 30-day trial; after that, you either pay a $20 monthly fee or become a Prime member. Being a Prime member is the better deal, likely by design. Neither my colleagues nor I have been impressed enough by Alexa+ to say it’s worth paying for on its own. I do like the updated, more conversational voice, and Alexa+ did a good job answering all kinds of questions quickly and thoughtfully. Check out our early access hands-on for everything I thought while testing.
Alexa+ has brought some changes, even for those not using it. It now requires that all voice recordings be sent to Amazon for processing, which wasn’t required before. Amazon has changed its features to support this, and now all recordings with regular Alexa go to Amazon, too. There used to be a “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” privacy feature you could select to have voice requests processed locally, but it was discontinued on March 28, 2025, per an email Amazon sent to current users.
FAQs
What’s the Difference Between an Echo and an Echo Show?
A regular Echo is a smart speaker, or a speaker with microphones in it so it can hear you speak to it and respond. An Echo Show is a smart display, which has a screen and a camera to let you make video calls, stream content, and see your questions answered on a screen. Both have similar capabilities when it comes to smart home control, answering questions, and playing music, but Echo Shows have extra abilities thanks to the screen. All Echo Shows have a camera and come with a physical camera cover for privacy.
When’s the Best Time to Buy an Echo?
The best time to buy any Amazon speaker is during a major sale event like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, when there are often steep discounts. You’ll often see the cheaper speakers for around 50 percent off, and the larger speakers see some nice sale prices too.
How and Where Should You Set Up Your Alexa?
Alexa speakers get the best use in spaces you’re in often. I like setting mine up in my kitchen and living room—usually a display in the kitchen, so I can pull up a recipe or the weather while I make my morning cup of tea, and a speaker in the living room so I can play music and command the lights without a screen to distract from the TV or playing with my son. You can also set one up in the bedroom to use as an alarm clock, but make sure it’s a model without a camera for the best privacy.
Ultimately, what’s most important is that the speaker is somewhere it can hear your commands. Where that will be will vary based on your home, but think about where you’ll be when you ask for the weather or to dim the lights, and place your speaker accordingly.
You’ll set up Alexa speakers using the Alexa app, which allows you to manage multiple Alexa speakers if you own more than one through your Amazon account. Third-party speaker setup methods may vary.
Is Alexa Always Listening?
Alexa is always listening, to a certain extent. It’s designed to only listen for its wake word and shouldn’t be recording or processing any audio unless it hears that word. But Alexa can sometimes mishear a word and think it’s the wake word, or it might hear a word similar enough to activate the speaker. If you’ve owned an Alexa, there have likely been times when the assistant suddenly responds when you weren’t speaking to it. Once it hears the wake word (or what it believes to be the wake word), it will start listening to everything in an attempt to hear what you need and respond.
Alexa+, the latest version of Alexa, will also remain on for a little bit after you ask a question to listen for follow-up questions, no wake word required. Both Alexa and Alexa+ light up in some fashion (regular speakers will turn the light ring blue, while the displays will have a blue bar appear on the screen) to let you know the assistant is listening. Most Echo devices also have a physical mute button and will display a red light or red bar to let you know when the mute is activated.
How Do You Remove Ads and Spam From an Echo Show?
If you’re using an Echo Show device, you’ve likely noticed there is a ton of default content the device will show you. Sports scores! Local news! A recipe you might be interested in! It makes the device exhausting and annoying to be near.
Here’s how you can control what you see:
- Swipe down from the top of your Echo Show to pull up the menu, and select Settings.
- In the Settings menu, choose Home Content.
- There are more than 40 options you can toggle on and off on this menu, and you should remove as many as you can that you don’t use. I usually remove all but weather forecasts and recently played audio.
While you’re able to turn off interest-based ads from third-party skills (this is under Alexa Privacy in the Settings menu), it won’t stop all ads. The only setting that is ad-free is choosing Photo Display mode, which can use either Amazon’s included library of photos or your own. The downside is that it turns it into a digital photo frame, so you won’t even see a clock or features like widgets.
Can I Have My Alexa Requests Locally Processed, or Do They Have to Go to the Cloud?
There used to be a privacy feature called Do Not Send Voice Recordings that let you have all your voice requests processed locally on your Alexa device instead of being sent to Amazon’s cloud storage. That feature was killed in March 2025 to support Alexa+, and even if you continue to use the old Alexa, you don’t have access to that feature any longer.
How Does WIRED Select Smart Speakers to Test? How Are These Speakers Tested?
For this guide, we specifically test speakers that are compatible with Amazon Alexa. It’s a big limitation and narrows down the options significantly, especially compared to speaker options you’ll see in our other guides like the Best Bluetooth Speakers. That’s mainly Amazon’s own ecosystem of speakers, and while there are third-party options, the best options tend to be of Amazon’s own design to work with its own voice assistant.
Each speaker gets installed in a tester’s home for day-to-day use, to see how the microphone performs, how the speaker sounds with different types of music, how well the smart home control features work with compatible devices such as smart lights and video doorbells, and to test other features as necessary (e.g., streaming features on smart displays).
How Does WIRED Get Models? What Does WIRED Do After Testing Them?
We acquire review units usually as a press sample, though we will also independently purchase samples if need be. All review units in this guide were provided as press samples with no obligation to cover or promises for what that coverage would be.
After testing, we keep most of our picks either installed for long-term testing in our homes or in storage to compare against updated models and new speakers that come out. If the sample becomes irrelevant or unnecessary to keep, we donate it locally.
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