With Echo shows, Echo Spots and Echo Dots, where do you start? Well, Amazon is letting you take Echo to the max with the Echo Dot Max! The question is whether the Max is worth the upgrade.
Style!
Even opening the box up I was getting good vibes from this device. The box front pulls down to have the Echo Max sitting on top of a little segment housing the power cable. I don’t know why, but satisfying unboxing experiences still bring me joy.
The device itself is similar in size to the Echo Dot, and looks similar except, instead of being an orb, it has a concave section at the front with two volume buttons with a mic mute button in the middle. It gives the device a kinda cool, kinda weird, sci-fi look to it. I frickin love the style. The outer circle of that concave section lights up when you are chatting to Alexa and highlights where Alexa is hearing the sound. It also shows the volume level with the circle filling up until at max volume.
Functionality
It’s all fun and games to look good, but how does it operate? Well, like an echo device. Setting up the device is as easy as following some basic steps in the Alexa app on your phone, and – boom! Your fancy looking Echo Max is good to go.
One of the big benefits to the new concave spot is that it is touch sensitive. This means you can touch the area to do things like turn off that alarm through your bleary sleepy eyes. That or maybe you need to pause your jams when the kids charge into the room, tap it to tell them to go back to the room and tap again to go back to your jams as you are doing the ironing.
When it comes to the sound, it’s damn impressive. It’s a small speaker, and comes equipped with a 2.5 inch sub. It doesn’t have any fancy stereo audio, but it doesn’t need it. The Echo Dot Max is designed to sit in the corner of the room, by the bed, or on a shelf, so it comfortably pumps out sound in one direction – and that sound is way too good for the size. I was able to jam music way louder than I would actually use day to day, and the sound was good up to high levels. Yea it doesn’t sound as great as an expensive dedicated speaker, but it’s way better than it should sound for the size.
New things!
This beastie is equipped with all the new tech. It has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. It is ready for Alexa+, when it is released in AU and NZ, that is. Then it can even act as a hub for Zigbee, Matter, and Thread. This is becoming especially important as a wider range of IoT devices bounce between these technologies. So being able to control them all from Alexa is useful.
There is a cool new feature where they can be used as speakers for Firestick devices. I unfortunately don’t have one in my house since we had a little kid meet technology accident, but if it works the way it says, this is a pretty big win for Firestick fans.
Should you get one?
The Echo Dot Max is an absolute banger of a smart speaker. If you aren’t going to use all the new features, it may be a hard one to justify the upgrade if you have one of the recent devices. If you are looking for an upgrade, or starting to build up your smart home, this is well worth the price!
It may not be that cheap, but it is pretty damn awesome!
