Echo Dot (newest model - 2024) Deep Sea Blue

The Echo Dot 5th Gen Deep Sea Blue is the small one in the colour that is meant to be looked at.

• Buy more than one Echo Dot 5th Gen Deep Sea Blue
• Drop in and announcements change how a house works
• Deep sea blue, and the point of a colour
• What it does not have
• The things it shares with the rest of the range

Buy more than one Echo Dot 5th Gen Deep Sea Blue

This is the argument that gets missed. Several Dots in several rooms play the same thing in step, so music follows you from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom without pausing, or each room plays something different. Compared with running speaker cable, or with buying one large speaker that only works in one room, it is a remarkably cheap way to get sound through a whole house, and you can add a room at a time as the budget allows.

Drop in and announcements change how a house works

With more than one, they become an intercom. Call the kitchen from the bedroom, or say one sentence that comes out of every Dot in the building at once. In a house with an upstairs, a garden and a back room, this quietly replaces walking around looking for people, and it is the feature that families keep long after the novelty of asking about the weather has worn off.

Deep sea blue, and the point of a colour

A dark blue that reads as a considered object rather than a piece of equipment. It sits better on a wooden shelf or a coloured wall than either the charcoal or the white, both of which are trying not to be seen. If the Dot is going somewhere visible, this is the one to pick.

What it does not have

No Zigbee radio. It controls Wi-Fi and Matter devices, so Zigbee bulbs, plugs and sensors will still want a gateway. And no screen, so alarms are set and snoozed by voice or by tapping the top rather than read off a display; the clock version covers that if it is going beside a bed.

The things it shares with the rest of the range

Music, radio, timers, questions, reminders and control of your smart plugs, bulbs and switches. A temperature sensor inside for routines that react to a warm room. Tap the top to snooze or pause. One button that cuts the microphones electrically.

The same speaker comes in charcoal and glacier white. For a bedside table, the Dot with a clock shows the time through the fabric. For how the range has changed, see Wikipedia.