Amazon Echo - White Sandstone (3rd Gen)

The Amazon Echo 3rd Gen is the cylinder one, and still one of the best sounding speakers Amazon have put an Alexa in. A 3 inch woofer with a 0.8 inch tweeter firing into a 360 degree cabinet, which is why it does not matter where in the room you put it.

• What the Amazon Echo 3rd Gen still does very well
• Two of them make a stereo pair
• Read this: there is no Zigbee hub inside
• The microphone button is a real disconnection
• The socket on the back

Ask it for music, the radio, a timer, the news or the weather. Tell it to turn the lights off, or announce to every room at once.

What the Amazon Echo 3rd Gen still does very well

A 3 inch woofer and a 0.8 inch tweeter firing into a 360 degree cabinet, which is the reason it does not matter where you put it. There is no front to sit in and no direction to aim. On a kitchen counter, a shelf, or a table people walk around, a cylinder that radiates evenly is a more practical shape than a speaker with a face, and this remains one of the better sounding things Amazon have put an Alexa inside.

Two of them make a stereo pair

Buy a second and they pair as left and right rather than playing the same thing twice. That is the cheap route to a room that sounds properly wide, and it is worth knowing before you spend the same money on one larger speaker. They also join the multi room group with any other Echo in the house.

Read this: there is no Zigbee hub inside

This generation controls Wi-Fi smart devices by voice, but it does not carry the Zigbee radio that the 4th generation sphere has. If your plan involves Zigbee bulbs, plugs or sensors, you will still need a gateway alongside this one, or you should buy the 4th generation instead. We would rather you knew that now than discovered it after the sensors arrive.

The microphone button is a real disconnection

Press it and the microphones are cut electrically while the ring turns red. That is a physical break in the circuit, not a software setting that an update or a remote change could quietly undo. For a speaker that lives in a sitting room or a bedroom, the difference matters.

The socket on the back

A 3.5 mm jack that works as line in and line out. Out, it will feed an amplifier or a pair of powered speakers when the built in drivers are not enough. In, it will take a turntable, an old CD player or anything else with a headphone socket, which quietly turns the Echo into the speaker for equipment that has no network of its own.

For the newer sphere with Zigbee, Matter and Thread inside, see the Echo 4th Gen in charcoal. For a much smaller and cheaper assistant, the Echo Dot. Every model Amazon has made is listed on Wikipedia.