A new temperature sensor and some tap gesture controls also make the cut. The only things missing are a Zigbee smart home hub and Dolby Atmos – you’ll need to step up to the full-fat Echo and Echo Studio respectively for those.įor the 2022 update, Amazon has kept almost all of the above, while also adding Amazon’s own AZ2 neural edge processor, which lets each Dot do more things locally rather than beam your data to the cloud and wait for a response.

There’s a 3.5mm audio output on the back for hooking it up to a wider sound system. It supports lossless HD audio streaming from Amazon’s Music HD service, can control your smart home with your voice, and lets you make hands-free voice calls. The 4th-gen Echo Dot is hardly short on smarts, with almost the same Alexa abilities as the larger, pricier Echo.

While we’ve yet to hear it in person, that promises to have quite the sonic punch. The cone has a higher excursion now, so should deliver twice the amount of bass. Its audio abilities are pretty good for a sub-£50 smart speaker, with good vocal clarity and a punchy mid-range, but a merely alright level of bass.įor the updated model, Amazon has completely reengineered the speaker driver, without having to make the physical device any larger. By switching from a hockey puck shape to a sphere, it found enough extra space inside to reorient the 1.6in speaker driver to face forwards, rather than upwards. The 4th Gen Echo Dot was a step up from the previous edition. Each gets its own cutesy contextual greetings and bespoke joke book. It’s been updated with two new animal patterns: an owl and a dragon, joining the existing Panda and Tiger. It also gets a new colour option: cloud blue, in addition to the original Glacier White.įor a more child-friendly design, you should head to the Echo Dot Kids. The higher resolution lets it display scrolling text for things like weather updates, calendar notifications and now playing info. It’s brighter, for a start, so will be easier to see in direct sunlight. It gets an updated LED display, which can do a lot more than just tell the time. The biggest changes are underneath, and reserved for the Echo Dot with Clock.

Echo dot 4th gen