Echo Dot Walk can run soda pop

when i first saw $39.99 Echo Pop — Amazon’s latest Alexa-powered smart speaker — the word “jaunty” sprang to my mind. It looks fun, cute and happy. After testing it for a few days, its looks are the main reason I’d buy one of these $49.99 Fifth-gen Dot, There are no new features; In fact, it loses something to make up for that $10 price cut. It doesn’t hear or sound as well as the Dot.

But if you want a smart speaker to listen to podcasts, control smart home devices, and answer occasional math questions in small rooms like the bathroom, laundry room, or guest room, the Pop, with its smaller size, better color options With, and low price, will fit in fine. For larger rooms in your home, the Echo Dot can do more and sound better for just $10 extra.

The Echo Pop is a semi-circular smart speaker with three physical buttons (volume up and down and mute) and a barrel plug with a long white power cord connected to a 15-watt power brick. (Amazon hasn’t adopted USB-C for power on any of its Echo smart speakers yet.)

It has Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant baked in and can do everything it brings with it – stream music, set multiple timers, trigger Alexa routines, control connected smart home devices, play silly games, and more. Even tell funny jokes. It also serves as a home intercom and telephone.

The Pop is only the second speaker to receive Amazon’s AZ2 Neural Edge processor, which allows for more local processing of voice commands, such as “What time is it?” and “turn off the lights” faster than non-AZ2 Echos. (The latest Echo Dots and Echo Show 15 smart displays also have it).

Echo Pop is the cheapest Echo speaker with a list price of $40. Like all Echo speakers, it’s likely to see major price cuts as part of Amazon’s play to get its smart voice assistant in every room of your home. But remember, with cheap hardware comes many attempts to sell you the stuff. While testing the Pop, I set an alarm that offered to upsell me on a loud alarm sound.

But, if you use Alexa, you know this, and if you’re good with it, you probably want Alexa and its more useful, less intrusive features in every room. For more details, see my Echo Dot with Clock review).

While only slightly smaller than the Echo Dot, the Pop’s flat face fits better on a bookshelf or table. The addition of black and white, as well as teal and purple color options, adds to that fun factor making it feel more like a design choice and less a piece of tech in a room. And it looks great compared to the loathsome Echo Flex, Amazon’s previous attempt at a budget speaker to bring Alexa into every room.

While the Pop has all the same smart home radios as the Dot—it’s an Eero Mesh Wi-Fi system, a Matter controller, and an extender for the A. footpath bridge, it lacks some of the Dot’s more advanced sensors. There’s no temperature sensor or ultrasound motion detector, and the accelerometer that powers the tap-to-snooze feature only works for alarms, not pausing and resuming music as on the Dot. I also accidentally discovered that you can’t snooze or dismiss an alarm by tap or voice if the internet is off, so it’ll be a pull-the-plug moment.

The biggest question, though, is if you’re looking for a cheap Echo smart speaker, should you pick up the Pop or the Dot? Here’s a look at how the two stack up.

sound: The Echo Pop is fine for listening to podcasts or the radio and is acceptable for listening to music if you’re in a small room and sitting right next to it. It’s especially better when paired with another pop of stereo. But this isn’t a device to buy for banging tunes. While the Dot isn’t either, and is in fact a smaller front-firing speaker, it has a richer sound and better bass, so if that’s a consideration — spend the extra $10. Plus, as with the Dot, you can tap it to quickly pause the music. With Pop you have to use voice commands.

If you already have a better Alexa speaker and/or a better Bluetooth speaker, you can pair the Pop with either of those and save $10. But neither the Pop nor the Dot have a 3.5mm audio jack. If you wanted to add voice control to a dumb speaker using a wire, the third-gen Dot was your cheapest option. But Amazon has discontinued that model, so if you need that feature and can find it, grab it. (The $100 fourth-gen Echo has the audio jack, too).

Speed ​​and Performance: The Pop and Dot have the same AZ2 Neural Edge processor, so most commands execute faster than on older Echos. But the Dot responded slightly faster in side-by-side testing, picking up my voice faster from afar. However, if you’re placing the pops on your desk or bedside table, you won’t notice much of a difference.

Sensor: The lack of temperature and ultrasound sensors make the Pop less useful as a smart home controller. With the fifth-gen Echo Dot, you can use its temperature sensor to do things like adjust your smart thermostat when a room gets too warm or its ultrasound sensor to turn on a light when you walk inside She goes. Both the Pop and the Dot can trigger Alexa routines based on sound detection, such as a dog barking, water rushing in, or someone snoring.

size and shape: As mentioned, I prefer the look of pops compared to dots. While it’s only slightly smaller (3.9″ x 3.3″ x 3.6″) than 3.9″ x 3.9″ x 3.5″, the design fits better on a desk or bedside table. I’m also a huge fan of the new purple color, but I’ve always had an affinity for purple products. Teal looks a bit muddy, more gray than green, but more discreet than any of the other dot colors.

What pop? Oddly, the Pop doesn’t have an action button, which almost every other Echo does. This lets you make calls without asking Alexa’s name. I actually use it a lot and missed it here. The only other Echo without it is the Echo Spot, which this device is very similar to in form factor (though it has no screen or camera).

There is also no option of clock display with pop. My favorite is the Echo Dot with Dot Clock, which uses a dot matrix display to show the time and a few other bits of useful information. That’s not an option here, though Amazon moved the Alexa LED light from the bottom, where it’s in the Dot, to the top, where it appears as a small bar (you can adjust its brightness in the Alexa app). Are).