Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: Back from the dead

You’d be forgiven for thinking the Amazon Echo Spot was dead and buried alongside a stack of unloved Fire Phones and Dash Buttons. The Alexa-toting alarm clock hasn’t been seen in seven years, since it launched in 2017 to modest approval.

But it’s back, and a few changes have been made along the way. These changes are positive overall, but there’s one objective advantage it has over the original Spot: it’s £40 cheaper.

So is it worth buying one? Let’s find out…

Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: What you need to know

In the seven years since the last release, Amazon has made a whole load of Echo devices, with options to occupy a room in every devotee’s house. Indeed, you might consider the Echo Spot surplus to requirements given there are four sizes of Echo Show available with a bigger, more practical screen.

But Amazon thinks there’s room for a smart speaker with the footprint of an Echo Pop packing a small touchscreen. The display area itself has got smaller, with the rest taken up by a fabric speaker grille.

Amazon stresses you can’t use this version for video streaming — not that the 2.83in screen would be that great for it — and, in a nod to privacy, has removed the integrated camera. That means video calls are out, but on the upside, you won’t have a camera pointed at your bed, which is a definite improvement in my book.

Sound has also been upgraded, with the 1.4in speaker in the original replaced by a 1.73in driver. Don’t expect miracles, but while the original was primarily useful for spoken audio and radio, this model can articulate music capably, too.

Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: Price and competition

But the biggest improvement is undoubtedly price. While the original sold for a quite optimistic £120, this model comes in at £80 — a price sure to drop even further during Prime Day and Black Friday.

If you want an Amazon-made Alexa-packed device to wake you up, the question was previously, “Would you like a screen with that?” If you did, the answer was the Echo Show 5 (£90), and if you didn’t, you’d be pointed to the Echo Dot with Clock (£65).

For Google Assistant fans, Google would point you towards the Nest Hub second generation, which is a bit like an Echo Show — only with added sleep tracking via Soli low-energy radar technology. It’ll set you back £90.

We haven’t reviewed them, but a couple of Chinese companies have got in on the act with small smart screens designed as bedside alarm clocks. There’s the £40 Xiaomi Mi Clock, or the now discontinued Lenovo smart clock, which is available on auction sites for under £50.

But there’s nothing quite like the Echo Spot, so it’s nice to see it returning. Hopefully, it won’t go seven years without an update this time.

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Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: Design

At 113 x 103 x 111mm (WDH) and tipping the scales at 405g, the 2024 Echo Spot is roughly the same size, shape and weight as the 2017 version, but at that point, the similarities begin to fizzle out.

First, there are two parts taken out: the camera and the 3.5mm audio jack. The former is a positive given only a specific type of person wants a camera in the bedroom, but the latter is a shame. Being able to wire your Spot to a better speaker offered some nice flexibility that’s been taken away, but it’s not surprising given it’s been removed from the rest of the Echo family over time (and you can still connect to another speaker via Bluetooth).

The main change, of course, is the screen, which takes up roughly three-fifths of the front, rather than all of it as before. Well, almost all of it: the bezels were nearly big enough to get their own postcode.

It’s something of an illusion here too: the black background masks the fact that the display itself is a 2.83in 320 x 240 rectangle floating in the middle of unused dark space. But in person, it’s nowhere near as obvious as on its predecessor, and it’s a move for the better, as the bottom half is now all fabric speaker for improved sound. But more on that later.

It’s not a great screen, given the low resolution, but it does the job well enough. Thanks to its reflectiveness, it does get harder to read if you’re not looking at it head-on in daylight, but that’s not a huge deal.

Overall, it looks a lot like the Echo Pop with a small screen built in. And while I was quite dismissive of the Pop’s place in the Echo family, given the Dot is only £10 more for a better experience, this makes a lot more sense. Amazon is still struggling to find a reason for a full-sized touchscreen, but a little one like this is perfect for what it does well: telling the time, providing weather icons and showing what music is currently playing.

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Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: Sound and performance

What this screen can’t do is stream Netflix, Prime Video or anything else. I don’t think that’s much of a loss — binge-watching the latest boxset at 320 x 240 resolution sounds like a miserable experience to me.

But without the most obvious reason to have a screen, what exactly is left? Not a great deal, but it’s all sensibly implemented. By default, the Echo Spot shows a nice, large digital clock with a smaller section above that cycles through the date and weather. There are six clock faces to choose from, with six different colour schemes — though, in truth, there’s not a great deal of difference between them.

The best implementation is with music. Ask Alexa to play a song, and the clock takes a back seat, while the album art, streaming source and song title take centre stage. Curved colourful lines circle the central icon as the music plays, evoking the spinning of a vinyl LP, and if you touch the screen, limited playback controls (previous, pause and next) pop up to save your voice.

Smart home functionality gets a tiny bit more depth, too. Saying “Alexa, turn on the bedroom light” will not only do as you ask but present a big on/off button on the screen for you to press, should you have a sudden change of heart.

Other implementations are more basic. Asking about the weather shows forecast-style icons that pop in with temperature highs and lows, while asking for a joke shows a fish in a bowl in front of a microphone at the world’s most confusing open-mic night. Asking about your commute, meanwhile, is basic to the point of worthlessness: there’s no map, just the distance and time it will take. Do I really need to know that my commute is 19.3km?

Most of these complaints could be made about the Echo Show, however, and the point is that on a screen this size, these are nice extras rather than a missed opportunity. With the smart design, I rather like these visual cues to accompany the audio.

And what of the audio? Well, it’s decent. This is a small speaker, so don’t expect it to blow you away. To my ears, it sounds a little reedier than the fifth-generation Echo Dot, but given both are listed as featuring a 1.73in driver, that may be my mind playing tricks on me. Either way, music is perfectly listenable, and that’s a big improvement on the original Spot, which struggled with anything more tuneful than audiobooks, radio and podcasts.

And how is Alexa these days? As ever, Amazon’s virtual assistant is great until it isn’t. Asking for specific songs is simple and intuitive (though you have to be careful if an album has the same name as a track), and it’s got better at answering questions you might otherwise Google.

But it still has limited contextual awareness. I was testing this on the day of the Euro 2024 semi-finals, and asked “What time is the England match?” Rather than telling me it was at 8pm, Alexa decided to give me an update on the cricket — which would be understandable, except it didn’t even tell me anything about the time at Lord’s either.

Amazon Echo Spot 2024 review: Verdict

I like the Echo Spot. While the screen may seem unnecessary given visual implementation is so limited, it’s telling that I missed it when comparing the Spot to the various other Dots in my house. When asking an old Dot to play some music, I had to ask Alexa via voice what a track was, rather than just looking at the screen.

Of course, if you just want a clock for the bedroom, then the Echo Dot with a Clock remains the sensible choice from a budget perspective. But with the current discount for early adopting Prime subscribers, the Dot is £15 more, which makes the Spot a no-brainer. It’s another hit from Amazon.