The Amazon Echo Spot is supposed to be your bedside companion, but I’ve found it to be a perfect buddy for my work desk. The small display gives me a quick glance at the time, and I can quickly ask it to play a song when I’m writing an article. But, besides all this, I’ve spent most of my time asking it to turn on the lights in my house. The 2024 edition skips out on a camera but comes with some pretty neat tricks up its sleeve. At Rs 8,499, should it be your bedside/work desk companion? Let’s find out in this review.
Amazon Echo Spot (2024)
Rs 8,499
What Is Good?
- Perfect for bedside, work desk
- 2.83-inch display gives you info at a glance
- Works well with smart home products
- Support for Hindi language
- Alexa picks up requests despite cross-talking
- Decent sound quality
What Is Bad?
- Costly
- Small screen, jarring UI
Pricing and Availability in India
The Amazon Echo Spot is available for Rs 8,499 on Amazon.in store in two colour variants.
Design and Display
The 2nd-gen Echo Spot has a more straightforward approach with its design. It has a similar orb-like structure from the 2017 edition but with more finesse. The speaker mesh occupies the bottom part, while the screen takes up the top half this time. The buttons are placed on the arc of the Echo Spot, hiding them away from sight but still making it reachable. Both Black and Blue colour options look amazing, but if you want something more subtle, the former is your best bet.
| Design | Specifications |
| Dimensions | 113mm x 103mm x 111mm |
| Weight | 405 grams |
| Display size | 2.83-inch |
| Resolution | 240×320 pixels |
| Box contents | Echo Spot, power adapter (15W), and quick start guide |
You get individual volume buttons and a mute button. The latter also gets a red LED light, which illuminates when activated. The bottom part is padded in rubber. This makes it tough to knock the Echo Spot down in your sleep. The barrel connector port is also neatly placed in the back, so cable management is not a major task.
Amazon wants the Echo Spot to be your smart alarm clock, pretty much your bedside companion. For that reason, it skips out on including a camera. But it still keeps the display, albeit a little smaller than usual. The 2.83-inch screen is touch-enabled so that you can scroll through the UI for settings and other features. While the display size is limiting, it’s more than enough for a glance at the time and weather.
The top half of the Echo Spot is cleverly designed to make you think that the entire half is filled with a display when viewed from afar. But that’s not the case. The 240×320 pixels resolution might seem to be on the lower side, but the display does not look pixelated. It’s bright enough even in daylight but is also a major fingerprint magnet. The touchscreen works as intended, but the UI is slow, making the scrolling experience jarring. That’s not really a dealbreaker for me since I usually resorted to voice commands.
Features and Audio Quality
The Echo Spot is an Alexa-enabled smart speaker, so it’s much more than just a fancy alarm clock. It’s essentially built for folks like me who lose their phones and use multiple alarms for early mornings. You can use voice commands to set up new alarms, timers, reminders, and more. While it misses a physical snooze button, the top portion of the Echo Spot can be tapped twice for the same. And this is by far the best implementation.
| Hardware | Specs |
| Audio | Full range 1.73” built-in speaker. |
| Processor | MT8519 |
| Memory | 1GB DRAM + 8GB eMMC |
| Smart home device compatibility | WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh, and Matter Enabled devices |
| Warranty | One year |
The Echo Spot offers a bunch of clock faces, all of which can be customised into different shades. It infuses subtle animations to keep things chirpy. The screen intelligently adjusts the clock face to a dark red colour and dims its brightness at 10 pm, making it ideal as a bedside table. This way, you don’t have to worry about the screen lighting up your bedroom at midnight.
Alexa continues to be smart and witty with its answers. It gives me a quick brief about the current weather and traffic updates before I leave for the office. Besides this, it has quite a few puns in its storage, but what’s even better is that you can converse with Alexa in Hindi. The far-field microphones are sensitive enough that I can be heard from across the room, which means I have little reason to leave my couch. Moreover, Alexa can also pick up questions even if multiple people in the room are cross-talking. Alexa also uses adaptive listening, which basically allows you to finish speaking before Alexa responds. You can also set a preferred speaking rate for the response in case they are too slow or fast.
However, it’s not without its flaws. There have been instances where Alexa would ignore my request. It pretty much acts like how I used to sit during my Maths class —- staring into the abyss. Luckily, Alexa’s ignorance wasn’t a common occurrence, so I could maintain my calm demeanour.
Besides assigning these menial tasks, you can ask Alexa to play music from streaming apps like Amazon Music. It utilises the small screen to show colourful visuals when music is being played. Speaking of which, despite its compact size, the Echo Spot packs in a loudspeaker. It’ll be harsh to compare it with dedicated Bluetooth speakers, but it gets the job done. I mostly catered to the Echo Spot when writing articles or whenever I was editing some photos. It gets loud enough to fill up the entire room and does not distort at higher levels.
The Amazon Alexa app lets you connect to the Echo Spot for fast pairing. It has a bunch of useful features, like making a call with your friends or family who have their own Alexa devices. You can also make announcements using the Echo Spot if you own multiple devices. The app also lets you create routines — this was extremely helpful. For example: you can say ‘Good Night, Alexa’ and it’ll turn off all connected smart lights. The app’s UI is a bit cluttered, so it feels a little overwhelming to use at times.
Verdict
I’ve used the Amazon Echo Spot as a bedside companion and a work desk buddy. I’ve found it to be useful in both situations, but for me, the latter scenario works best.
The 2.83-inch display, while small, is adequate for delivering information quickly and easily. Despite the compact nature of the Echo Spot, the speakers are loud enough for casual music or podcast listening. The build quality is nice, and it does not eat up too much space on your desk. For folks who are always scared of devices listening to them, the mute button provides a sense of security. Alexa remains witty and useful with its information, and the addition of the Hindi means the usability increases.
The Echo Spot would add even more value as a purchase if you own a lot of smart home devices. This way, you can make use of the ‘routines’ feature in the Alexa app.
That said, it comes with its downsides, too. The biggest of them being its price. While the introductory offer of Rs 6,499 was sweet, the current retail price of Rs 8,499 is on the costlier side of things. But if your priority list contains the functions mentioned above, then the Echo Spot makes sense. However, if you are fine with a smart speaker that does not have a display, the Amazon Pop or Echo Dot (5th Gen) can be a good alternative.
