Alexa Write for Us

Alexa Write for Us Alexa is a voice-controlled digital assistant that turns words into actions. Using voice guidelines or a smartphone app, you interact with Alexa through speakers and smart displays. Whether you’re looking for an Alexa-powered smart chatterer to listen to music, find and follow recipes, keep up with podcasts and news, or control smart devices around your home, we’ve got you covered. Choose the best model for your needs.

What is Alexa?

Alexa is the name of Amazon’s digital associate, which allows you to use voice commands to control a compatible device for functions like streaming music, reporting news, or even turning on your bright lights. Is. Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers and shows includes the standard Echo, the solid Echo Dot and Echo Pop, the Echo Studio, and select copies of the video-enabled Echo Show bright display. Alexa is also available on select third-party speakers.

How we picked and tested

For this guide, we looked at the available Echo Smart speakers and displays. In a previous version of this guide, we also looked at third-party speakers compatible with Alexa. But the experience using Alexa on these devices was consistently worse than any Amazon Echo device. Most experienced sometimes long delays on voice commands, less or less reliable integration of certain features, and didn’t receive updates or new parts from Alexa as quickly as possible. As a result, I think if you’re interested in an Alexa speaker, your best bet is one of the various Amazon-branded Echo devices. This guide focuses entirely on comparing the devices: Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Display (we previously covered the latter in our guide to intelligent displays only) to compare which experience is perfect for your lifestyle or different spaces in your home.

In addition to Alexa’s general features, we rate each speaker based on the following criteria:

Listening: A voice control device is useless if it can’t hear you, so we tested them at various distances and volume levels, with and without background noise (including the speaker’s music).

Sound quality: We listened to various music via standard streaming services and Bluetooth. Sound quality varies greatly as some Alexa speakers are designed for more critical listening than others. But we’re looking for reasonably good sound for the speaker’s price and size.

Design: Smart speakers aren’t devices to hide, so you’ll probably prefer a speaker that looks good on a shelf or counter, especially if you plan to use more than one in your home.

Setup and use: All Alexa speakers use the Alexa app. But we still compared to see if different models had different setup steps, like the Echo Smart Display versus the speaker-only Echo. We then compared how each feature can be used and where each model excels at home.