Gadgetory

swimming in a sea of recently announced Amazon devices is the second generation echo plus it costs one hundred and fifty dollars the same price as the original but comes with a totally redesigned look like other echo devices announced this year the Echo Plus has a new fabric shell and is available in charcoal heather gray and sandstone it's also much shorter than the original echo plus and has upgraded Dolby speaker hardware a 3-inch neodymium woofer and increased volume gives the smart speaker fuller sound and a better bass response in its predecessor and when you compare the two side-by-side you can definitely tell a difference some things stay the same though like the echo plusses built-in ZigBee radio that serves as a smart home hub so you won't need a hub plugged into your router to control ZigBee devices amazon's new Wi-Fi simple setup makes this super easy to simply plug in your device and ask the plus to discover it there's also a new built-in temperature sensor so you can set routines to trigger based on the temperature sensed by the echo plus and a new capability called local voice controlled compresses commands locally on your device so if the Wi-Fi goes down you can still turn your lights on and off with the echo dot at $50 and the echo at 100 dollars is the Amazon echo plus worth the extra cash if you're starting your smart home want Amazon's voice assistant to control it and you need a smart home hub then yes the echo plus is the speaker for you the sound of graves in the newest echo dot and the redesign of the echo show means there's no shortage of Amazon speakers to choose from the echo plus makes some decent strides forward in this generation but if you already have a smart home hub I'd recommend another smart speaker that either saves you money or adds a screen to your experience