Amazon Echo Dot Review

Amazon Echo Dot was purchased in November 2016.

For comparison, I also have an Amazon Echo, Echo Spot and an Echo Show 8.

The main advantage of the Echo Dot is that it's very cheap, yet gives you access to most of the Amazon Echo features available. There are often some very good deals around and this device is often given away free with other services.

If you wanted to test out the Amazon eco-system and get a taste of what it can do, then this is the best device to start with. If nothing else, you can use it as a Bluetooth adapter to a decent amplifier and speakers, for playing music.

Limitations

It obviously needs an Internet connection (via Wi-Fi to work, though the reliability of the connection has been excellent in my home as I'm using a mesh Wi-Fi solution.
It requires and Amazon account and is obviously tied into the wider Amazon eco-system.
The quality of the audio output via the in-built speaker is not good. You certainly wouldn't want to use it for music. I use mine with a separate amplifier and speakers though. This has to be switched on for you to be able to hear Alexa's response though.
These are always on devices, always using power and as such are phantom loads.

In Use

The Dot comes with a plug-in mains PSU with a USB output socket. The supplied USB C cable then delivers power to the USB C port on the device. In standby it uses about 0.25A and when making requests, this rises to around 0.55A.

One of the more annoying things with all Amazon Echo devices is that they will occasionally and randomly active even though you didn't specifically direct a request to Alexa. This happens more often in rooms where you tend to talk more, e.g. the lounge. This is yet to happen in our bedroom.

Use Cases

General Knowledge

There Amazon Echo devices are general pretty good as general knowledge questions and I find myself asking Alexa random questions as they come into my head. Some recent examples from my activity feed:

How many children does Hugh Grant have?
How old is Donald Trump?
How old is Joe Biden?
Tell me about the history of the Ampersand symbol.
How long is the Le Mans F1 circuit?
Where is the Formula 1 race this weekend?

Lists

As a family, we have never really embraced shopping lists until we started using lists on my Echo Show 8.

Summary

For a long time, my Amazon Echo Dot sat in my kitchen, connected to a separate amp and speakers and it has worked well. The main two things I do with it are ask it to set timers and to connect my Smartphone to it via Bluetooth, to play music off my phone and via the Spotify app. In October 2020, it was replaced in the kitchen with an Echo Show 8.