Amazon Prime Day doesn’t start until July 16 and lasts two days instead of one, but Amazon already has an early Prime Day deal for its just-announced 2nd Generation Echo Spot smart alarm clock. Available in black, glacier white, and ocean blue, it’s listed for $80, but Prime members can get it for $45 through July 17, while supplies last. Non-Prime members can join or purchase a free prime trial to take advantage of the discount offer.
Like its predecessor, the new Echo Spot has a touchscreen and displays a variety of custom-designed watch faces. It’s also Alex-enabled, allowing you to use your voice to set alarms, check the weather, play songs and command your Alexa smart home products. Amazon says the new Echo Spot “builds on what our customers loved most about the original product — like its hemispherical shape, access to Alexa, and its compact, vibrant display — and redesigns it with even better visuals and improved audio quality.”
When the original Echo Spot came out in 2017, former CNET editor Ry Crist described it as “the love child of Amazon’s most expensive Echo gadget, the touchscreen Echo Show, and its least expensive Alexa gadget, the diminutive Echo Dot.” With an introductory price of $130, the original had its merits, but wasn’t as compelling as we’d hoped.
The new Echo Spot’s screen is more of a semi-circle, with a 1.73-inch speaker beneath it. It doesn’t have an integrated camera like the original for making video calls.
The new Echo Spot’s screen is larger in diameter with no bezel around it. But it’s more of a semi-circle than the original’s fully circular screen. It’s unclear whether the screen is sharper than the original, but we’ll confirm once we get our hands on a review unit.
This new model has a 1.73-inch front-firing directional speaker that Amazon says offers improved sound over the original, with “clear vocals and deep bass.” Other features include the ability to have Alexa “call loved ones, make household announcements, audibly turn on other Alexa devices in your household, or receive notifications and audio from your compatible smart doorbell.”
You can ask Alexa to set an alarm for you.
Unlike Amazon’s Echo Show products, the screen is designed to display rudimentary animations, not full video. There’s also no integrated camera, so you can’t make video calls (the original had a camera). That’s probably a good thing if you’re concerned about privacy issues.
On that front, Amazon says the new Echo Spot, like other Alexa products, comes equipped with privacy controlsincluding a microphone mute button, the ability to view and delete your voice recordings, and more.
Like I said, we’ll have a full review once we get our hands on the new Echo Spot in the coming days. But if you’re looking for a smart alarm clock with audio capabilities, this seems like a pretty good value at $45. Note that right now, the Echo Show 5 (3rd generation) retails for $90, but could very well be on sale for Prime Day. It’s been marked down to under $50 during previous Prime Day events. We’ll see which device sounds better.
