Amazon unveils the new Echo Spot just in time for Prime Day
With its Prime Day sale right around the corner, Amazon has announced its latest smart speaker – the newly updated Echo Spot
Just as we’re gearing up to weather the storm of deals coming with the July Prime Day sale, Amazon has thrown us a curve ball by announcing the new Echo Spot. This latest addition to the retail giant’s extensive range of Echo smart speakers looks to be a step up from the Echo Pop, taking the same design and adding an interactive display into the mix to bridge the gap between the Pop and the Echo Show 5.
Amazon is calling the Echo Spot a “smart alarm clock”, so it’s unsurprising that this screen has several customisation options to better fit into your bedroom, including six colour themes – orange, violet, magenta, lime, teal and blue – as well as several different clock faces. Ironically, the speaker itself is quite conservative on the colour front, with only black, white and blue models on offer.
Assuming one of those three colours matches your bedroom aesthetic, you’ve got various customisation options when it comes to setting alarms. You’ll be able to ask Alexa to set specific alarms (such as weekdays at 7am) and even ask her to use a specific genre of music for the wake-up alarm. If that doesn’t appeal, the Echo Spot is also coming with four new alarm sounds.
As with all other Alexa-enabled devices, you can ask the assistant to snooze or cancel alarms but the addition of the digital display means you can also hit snooze with a quick tap. If the idea of a bright display in your face first thing in the morning sounds torturous, it’s worth noting that Amazon calls the panel a “gradual lighting display”, which sounds like it will either adapt brightness to the room’s lighting or tick up to a brightness of your choice along with the alarm playing.
Little information is available on this so far, but Amazon has stressed that there are colourful animations to go along with the alarms. It’s the same for weather, too: ask Alexa how the weather’s looking and you’ll get a temperature pop-up on the display, as well as a little animation of a storm cloud or shining sun, as applicable.
As a smart speaker, the Echo Spot can also play your tunes. Tucked beneath the display is a 1.73in front-firing speaker, which is a little smaller than the Echo Pop’s solitary speaker (1.95in), so we’ll have to see if audio quality suffers during testing. The screen will also display song titles while music is playing and can be tapped to play, pause and skip tracks. For volume control, you can either ask Alexa or use the physical buttons on top of the speaker.
Finally, you’ve also got access to all the usual Alexa features, including control of your other smart devices, routines and even accessing an audio feed from your smart doorbell – there’s no option to show video, however, which differentiates the Echo Spot from the video-focused Echo Show 5. The same goes for calls: don’t expect to be making video calls with your alarm clock any time soon.
The Echo Spot is available right now, with all colours priced at £80. However, Amazon Prime members can pick one up for an introductory price of just £50 until Prime Day ends on 17 July, or while stocks last, so don’t hang around if you fancy an Echo Spot for your nightstand.
