Gadgetory

hey guys I'm here in the scene that smart home today with the new third-generation Amazon echo dot and this is it right here this is the refresh for 2018 like you can see it's still kind of a hockey puck type design a little bit bigger than before and that's because Amazon is promising better sound from this thing so it's got a little more oomph to it and it's also got the fabric rim around the edge you can see on this black version here and that's because Amazon's trying to help it better compete against the fabric body Google home mini a lot of people seem to prefer that fabric a design looks a little more premium and softer and more appropriate for the home so it's kind of a tacit admission from Amazon that that might have been a better way to go with the design other than that though basically the same product you've got the same four buttons up top the two that bring the volume up and down here and then a button on the right to mute the assistant and one to activate her I'm not going to say her name if I can help it here and then in the back here you've got the same inputs the audio in if you want to make a wired connection to an external set of speakers and the powered jack which in a small change is not microUSB anymore it's now just a normal pronged AC jack so this is the new third gen echo dot we're gonna start testing it out let's take a look at how it does Amazon's first two ecco dots hit the market without any real competitors now the echo dot 3.0 has to contend with the Google home Mini a popular alternative that looks and sounds better than the last dot did the new fabric rim and the stronger sound of the new dot are both obvious attempts at neutralizing those advantages it's the first time the dots really needed to play defense so how did Amazon do well let's start with sound quality Amazon tells us that the new dot is 70% stronger than the old one and I got a say if you listen to the two back-to-back you'll definitely hear the difference all right so the sound quality pretty obviously stepped up from generation to to generation three but generation 2 wasn't as strong as the Google home Mini which debuted last year with sharper sound than the echo dot does the new dock close that gap I happen to think that the dot does sound a bit better than the whole Mini at this point but it's very close neither one is as strong as a full-size Smart speaker but both can fill the room and they're more than capable of doing your favorite playlists justice of course that sound quality argument is a moot point if you're just gonna connect the dot with an external set of speakers which you can still do via bluetooth or the oxide jack with the whole mini you don't get knocks out jack at all you can only connect to other speakers using bluetooth another potential edge for the new dot you can pair two of them together for stereo audio now I like the feature better with larger sized echo and echo plus speakers here it just seems like a way to get you to buy more dots than you need but you do have the option of adding in an echo sub for boosted bass aside from that there's not a whole lot that's inherently new here aside of course from that new design and to Amazon's credit I think they did a really nice job of it the black fabric is a clear step up from the plain plastic of before and I like that they ditched the Amazon logo to plus by keeping things more or less the same with those buttons up top Amazon's maintaining a consistent experience across generations a dot wasn't broken Amazon didn't fix it still the dot doesn't have interchangeable shells like the echo does and while those never really took off it still would have been nice if he could have gotten at least one color option that wasn't a shade of gray Amazon played it super super safe here probably a little more than they needed to in the end what's the most important thing about the new dot even with the improved design and stronger sound it's still just fifty dollars and honestly it's kind of hard to imagine a fifty dollar smart speaker that looks or sounds much better the dot isn't your only decent option anymore but it's still an outstanding choice and the constant competition that Google means that the steady stream of new tricks and features shouldn't slow down anytime soon it's a safer buy as ever and a great start if you want to build your smart home around voice you