Difference Between Echo and Echo Dot

Smart home speakers have become extremely popular over the years, with a number of top brands and manufacturers offering their own software and hardware solutions. One of those is Amazon, running their Alexa smart assistant software on all of their smart home speakers, including the Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot. We’ve already shown you the major differences between Alexa and the hardware, but what about the differences between actual hardware, such as the Echo and Echo Dot we already mentioned?

If you’ve been shopping around, you’ve already noticed that there’s a major price disparity between the two products. The Echo Dot is actually the cheaper of two, with the Echo being the more high performing option. But, before you buy, it’s important to understand all of the differences so that you buy the right product — after all, you don’t want to order, have it arrive, and then be disappointed in what it has to offer. So let’s dive right in, shall we?

Amazon Echo

The Echo has an excellent speaker profile inside of it, so when you do something like tell Alexa to play music or a favorite podcast, it’s able to output it on a premium level. It’s a whole lot more clear and crisp than your average Bluetooth speaker, actually. Not to mention that it has some great loudness without dropping clarity levels, which is generally hard to come by.

The Amazon Echo used to be Amazon’s top smart home speaker, but the Echo Plus actually took its place, offering slightly better speakers and microphone capabilities, but also coming equipped with a “hub.” The traditional Echo isn’t a “hub”, which means that you’ll have to have a separate Smart Home Hub attached or connected to your Echo in order for it to modify the state of, say, your Phillips smart home lights.

Not including a Smart Home Hub inside of the Echo makes the Echo much more affordable for the average consume — just $100. However, if you want to control lights and other smart home hardware with your Echo, you’ll have to buy a separate smart home hub to go with it, which will — obviously — cost you more. If you don’t care about the “Hub”, the Amazon Echo is a great choice at $100. However, if you plan on controlling lights, locks, your garage door, and so on anytime in the future, the Echo Plus is a much more economical investment.

Buy it now: Amazon

Echo Dot

You can picture the Echo Dot as a smaller, and less impressive (on the hardware side) version of the Amazon Echo. Amazon wants you to have an Echo in every important room in your home — the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, etc. Having one in each room, the Echo is extremely easy to use. From almost anywhere in your home, you can continue a conversation on the phone with your Echo, you can ask your Echo what the weather is, you can order items, and so on.

Unfortunately, the Echo is pretty expensive. It’s $100 each. So if you were to get one for four or five rooms in your home, you could be looking at up to a $500 price point. That’s not feasible for everyone, and certainly isn’t money that people would want to drop on a smart speaker. That’s why Amazon is offering a cheaper solution: the Echo Dot. These are small hockey-puck sizes of the Amazon Echo with some lower-end hardware packed inside. All of that paired together, an Echo Dot won’t cost you more than $50, possibly less if you snag it on a sale. So, if you were to get an Echo Dot for four or five rooms in the home, you would be looking at $250 max, much better than the $500 for five full size Echos.

Buy it now: Amazon

Verdict

As you can see, there are some pretty major differences between the Echo Dot and the Echo — mostly in price. Those who only want a premium speaker will probably want to stick with the Echo, but if you plan on putting Alexa in every room of your home, the Echo Dot is a much more economical way to make that happen.

Do you use Alexa and any of the Amazon Echo hardware? Planning on picking one up soon? Let us know what you’re grabbing in the comments section below — we’d love to hear from you.