The 14 Best Amazon Echo and Alexa Speakers (2024): We've Tested Them All

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Amazon’s household of Alexa-enabled devices is vast. From the spherical Echo to the swiveling Echo Show 10, you tin get Alexa into your location successful galore ways. These devices tin reply your questions, assistance you bid essentials, acceptable timers, play each sorts of audio content, and adjacent relation arsenic the power hub for your increasing astute home. These are our favourite Amazon Echo- and Alexa-compatible speakers for each location and budget.

The champion clip to bargain immoderate Amazon talker is during a large merchantability lawsuit similar Black Friday oregon Amazon Prime Day, arsenic determination usually are steep discounts. If you’re trying to determine which astute devices mightiness beryllium champion for you, beryllium definite to cheque retired WIRED’s picks successful our roundups, including the Best Smart Speakers, Best Smart Displays, and Best Bluetooth Speakers. We besides person guides connected setting up your Echo speaker, creating Alexa routines, and the best tricks an Echo Show tin do.

Updated August 2024: We've added the Echo Dot (5th Gen) arsenic a fund dependable pick, the Echo Spot (2nd Gen) arsenic our caller bedside array pick, and a caller conception connected different Amazon Echo speakers we've tested.

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Photograph: Amazon
Best Overall
Amazon Echo (4th Gen)
Amazon's fourth-generation Echo (8/10, WIRED Recommends) notably changed the signifier of the cylindrical talker into a talker ball. Unless you person a idiosyncratic vendetta against Amazon (you might), this is the best astute speaker you tin get for astir $100. Amazon has dialed successful its integer awesome processing and dependable prime implicit the erstwhile 3 Echos, and the rounded edges present assistance fidelity. The existent Echo comes with Amazon's AZI Neural Edge processor too, which helps it admit code amended than ever.
It works successful immoderate country successful the house. Use it successful the room for recipes and timers, successful the chamber for quality and weather, oregon successful the bath for ablution sing-alongs. It's compact, sounds decent, and is well-suited to everything you'd privation a astute talker to do. If euphony prime is your priority, scroll to the Echo Studio and Sonos speakers below, which are our favourite Alexa speakers for listening to music.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Best Display
Amazon Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen)
The Echo Show 8 has been our favourite astute show for Alexa for 3 generations successful a row, with the 2023 third-gen exemplary arsenic our latest pick. We similar this size much than the 5- and 10-inch versions, the smaller of which felt similar a weird smartphone, the larger similar a weird tablet that spins astir everywhere. This one's similar Goldilocks' cleanable porridge: It's large capable that upwind updates, video chats, and recipes amusement up clearly, but compact capable that it doesn't instrumentality up excessively overmuch countertop space. Amazon has besides added Widgets to the Echo Show 8, truthful you tin take up to 3 informative small squares to popular up connected the screen.
The third-gen exemplary is simply a small pricier than the erstwhile 1 due to the fact that it adds a astute location hub and spatial audio. If you don't deliberation you'll usage those abilities, the cheaper second-gen Echo Show 8 ($130) is inactive a large choice.