Amazon echo plus, another competitor to add to smart speakers

This time we have the opportunity to test the new Amazon echo plus speaker, with the assistant Alexa in full Castilian as an assistant. After the past Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and as some of our users mentioned «cyber week», surely more than one is enjoying these new speakers smart devices from Amazon at home.

It seems that we never end and the battle to enter our home with good sound quality and a good assistant is tough. A few days ago we carried out our own analysis on the Sonos One, spectacular speakers in terms of their quality, design and price ratio, today we get into this fight against the great HomePod: the amazon echo plus.

Simple in design and effective in sound

The first thing we have to highlight about this Amazon echo plus is that it is the "largest" model in the echo range, so it is also the one with the most power in terms of sound. We can say that with this speaker we have to enter into the doubt of buying a normal echo or the echo plus ... The truth is that we will talk about this later but it is about minimal differences in size, few in audio and yes something different in hardware internal that mounts the plus, since it has the digital controller with Zigbee technology plus a thermometer. As I say about this technology we will talk later, but when it comes to the design it is really simple but beautiful, one of those devices that looks good anywhere.

The sound of this Amazon echo plus, we can say that it meets expectations but does not exceed the HomePod, nor does it exceed it in price and this is another important issue. The audio of the Amazon echo plus is in the hands of a 76mm woofer and 20mm tweeter, so we can say that power is not lacking, although it is true that the bass is sometimes too intense and with a high volume together with powerful music in this sense it can distort more than expected. In general, the audio is not bad and is that Dolby technology generates a balanced and omnidirectional sound perfect for a large room, we can say that it is according to the measurements of the speaker itself.

What is the Zigbee technology?

The big difference between the normal echo and the echo plus for me is this technology that is added in the plus model. We are going to explain this in a simple way so that everyone understands it and that is that we can make our Amazon echo plus Behave as the control center for all smart home devices, without the need for hubs, bridges or the like. Which means that to use the famous Philips Hue bulbs, for example, we will not need the bridge at all, with this speaker and Alexa we already have enough to control the lights at home.

This happens with other smart devices that we can have at home such as those from IKEA, plugs, Netatmo thermostats, Osram Smart + lights, etc., so it is undoubtedly one of the great advantages of these echo plus compared to the younger brother that is the echo to dry, not to mention the main and most outstanding.

It has a 3,5mm mini jack port but requires a power cable

This Amazon echo plus has the advantage of having a 3,5mm jack connector and therefore we can connect any device we want to play our music. Now it is "strange" that someone uses this port for this type of speaker that connects via bluetooth to our smartphone, but better to have it.

On the other hand, to put something negative is that it has to be connected to the current always, so the speaker we can't take it with us anywhere. These types of speakers are all the same and it is because we do not find too many defects we have to look for something like this to "criticize" it.

Like the rest of the speakers that have Alexa, we can enjoy the Skills. For those who do not know what this Skills is, they are like applications that help us get the most out of the device by adding options from our iPhone or Android device, to play games, to listen to the news or to relax listening to the sound of The rain. The best way to know what it is once the speaker is installed is: "Alexa, I want to start using Skills."

Dimensions and weight	148 x 99 x 99 mm, weighs 780 g
Wifi connectivity	Dual band Wi-Fi compatible with 802.11a / b / g / n / ac networks (2,4 and 5 GHz). It does not support ad hoc (peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.

This new speaker model can be found directly foryour purchase on Amazon's own website. Smart speakers are undoubtedly gaining ground in our homes little by little and the competitors for Apple's HomePods are pushing harder and harder. Alexa is now in Spanish so we can say that it works wonders.

Editor's opinion