Editors' Note: There is a new version of the Echo Spot available. See our review of the Amazon Echo Spot (2024).

Amazon invented the ideal smart alarm clock two years ago in the Echo Spot, a perfect bedside companion for anyone interested in an Alexa-powered home. While expensive at $129.99, it was far better than using an Echo Dot or a traditional alarm clock to wake up to, with plenty of additional usefulness as a kitchen clock or a monitor for various smart home devices. It was one of the first smart displays we were really enthusiastic about, and remains high on our list of recommendations in the category, as well an Editors' Choice. However, the introduction of the $89.99 Echo Show 5 means the Spot has some very strong competition, and both are worthy of your attention.

Design, Audio, and Skills

The Echo Spot is a tiny globe with a flat edge that comes in black or white. It measures 4.1 by 3.8 by 3.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 14.8 ounces. It has a reasonably sharp 2.5-inch, 480-by-480 circular color touch screen on the front, and a 1.4-inch speaker that radiates out through a grille around the bottom. There's a small camera right above the screen. On the back, there's a 3.5mm audio out jack.

The design is cute, soothing, and harmonious. It'll look great on a bedside table, in a kitchen, or in a living room. As it's much smaller than both the Echo Show and even the Echo Show 5, it doesn't impose no matter where you decide to tuck it.

The Echo Spot connects to Wi-Fi on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, which is great in places that have crowded 2.4GHz airwaves. It's easy to set up, and when it's time to enter your home Wi-Fi password, a very tiny touch keyboard appears. It's surprisingly usable. Like other Alexa devices, the Echo Spot requires an Amazon account, and works best if you're plumbed into Amazon's services.

Keep in mind the Spot is not a full-room audio speaker. The Spot plays voices and midrange instruments without harshness. You'll wake up pleasantly, and if your Spot is in the kitchen, you'll enjoy listening to your morning news briefing a little more than if you use a Dot. But you won't be throwing dance parties in the living room, unless you use the 3.5mm output to attach it to a more powerful speaker.

The Spot is a full, first-class citizen of the Republic of Alexa. It works as part of a whole-home audio system, offers multiple wake words, has "ESP" to prevent it from answering if another Alexa device is nearer, and works with all of Alexa's thousands of third-party skills. It will play music from Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, or TuneIn, and it'll read you audiobooks or Kindle books. For a taste of Amazon's huge third-party skills library, see our sheet of The Highest-Rated Alexa Skills in Every Category.

Perfectly Alarming

Let's first treat the Spot primarily as an alarm clock more than a conventional smart display. It's small, it's round, it fits on your nighstand. It's ideal for that role.

There's an ambient light sensor in the Spot, which dims the screen in dark rooms. If any light at all bothers you, you can say "Alexa, turn off the screen," although the screen won't come back on until you turn the room lights on.

The clock offers six analog and six digital face options, plus the ability to use your own photos as a clockface. There are more than a dozen potential alarm chimes, as well as some odd celebrity voices (Alec Baldwin, for instance) telling you to wake up. You can also set an alarm to wake up to any song on a connected streaming service, or in your personal Amazon Music locker.

You can set multiple alarms, with different sounds or songs, and when the alarm goes off, tapping the screen or saying "Alexa, snooze," will snooze it for nine minutes. Swiping up on the screen will dismiss the alarm entirely. When you swipe right from the clock face, you see the weather—great for knowing what to wear in the morning—and then the less useful What to Do With Alexa and Trending Topics screens, which you can turn off if you want to.

Alexa's one downside, when dealing with groggy people, is that it's a stickler for exact wording. For instance, if you tend to have brilliant ideas in the middle of the night, "Alexa, add XYZ to my to do list," works, while, "Alexa, note to self," does not. Google Assistant is much better at interpreting differently phrased commands.

Screening Room

The Spot is mostly functional as a smart speaker with a clock on it, than as a dedicated smart display. It has a touch screen, yes, but the 480-by-480 circular LCD is too small to comfortably show any quantity of information. It can tell you the time, show icons for the weather, and display news headlines and other short messages, but you won't be getting full reports, or useful video playback, or a web browser like you can with the Echo Show and Echo Show 5.

In a smart home, the screen can show what's on your video doorbell, security camera, or connected baby monitor, as long as that device is also Alexa-capable. You can use the screen and camera to video chat with other screen-sporting Alexa devices, or the Alexa app on smartphones. I tried it with an Android phone and it worked well.

You can also play Amazon Video, some news videos, or movie trailers. You can't play music videos or YouTube. The round screen is a weird aspect ratio for videos; things are either going to be cropped severely or have big black borders.

Playing music, you'll see album art, and if you're lucky, lyrics. In the kitchen, the screen will help you step through recipes, but because the font size is quite big, you can't read enough of a recipe without swiping on the screen. Still, it's better than having an audio-only recipe, especially if you have trouble with auditory memory.

A lot of people won't want a camera in their bedroom. I put a small piece of black tape on the camera and it didn't seem to affect the ambient-light sensor; the Spot still got brighter and darker depending on the light in the room. The mic mute button on the top of the Spot (sandwiched between the volume buttons) also kills the camera, but then you lose voice control as well. You can say, "Alexa, turn off the camera," and Alex says, "Done," but then you get into spiraling paranoia around whether the camera is really off.