Amazon Echo Spot (2024) review: The smartest clock radio ever

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Truth in advertising is rare, but Amazon’s billing of the Echo Spot (2024) as a smart alarm clock actually undersells it. Yes, it’s the perfect nightstand accessory to ensure you get out of bed on time, but it’s also one of Amazon’s smallest full-featured smart home controllers—and a lot more.

But Amazon didn’t load it up with features you probably wouldn’t want in your bedroom anyway, such as a privacy-intruding camera. On the downside, that means it can’t be used to make video calls should you set it up in other rooms of your home; say, your kitchen or living room. As such, I’ve listed the absence of a camera as both a pro and a con.

Just don’t buy one if you’re looking for a high-quality speaker for music. Waking up to tunes from your favorite artist and streaming service, or having it play background music while you’re performing other tasks is one thing, but no one should attempt a critical listening session on a speaker this small—even if you can pair two of them as a stereo pair and reinforce the low end with an Echo Sub.

You can stream music from the Echo Spot to a better Bluetooth speaker that doesn’t have any other means of connecting to your music service (apart from streaming from your phone, that is), but that seems like a lot of trouble—and it leaves you with a lot of clutter.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Specifications

• Dimensions: 4.4 x 4.5 x 4.1 inches (HxWxD) (111 x 113 x 103mm)
• Processor: Mediatek MT8519, with 8GB DRAM and 8GB eMMC memory
• Connectivity: Dual-band Wi-Fi 5 (2.4- and 5GHz 802.11ac), Bluetooth LE, Matter over Wi-Fi (no Thread radio), Amazon Sidewalk
• Display: 2.83-inch glass touchscreen, resolution of 240 x 320 pixels
• Exterior color choices: Black, Glacier White, or Ocean Blue (as reviewed)
• Clock face choices: 6 (analog and digital)
• Display color themes: Blue, lime, magenta, orange, violet, or teal
• Motion detection: Via ultrasound, can trigger Alexa routines

The Amazon Echo Spot as a clock

Michael Brown/Foundry

The Echo Spot’s touchscreen displays just a clock face most of the time (when it’s not playing music). You can choose a 12- or 24-hour clock with six faces, five digital and one analog. An ambient light sensor changes the display to just red numbers when it’s dark, so as to not disturb your sleep (and to preserve your night vision should you need to get out of bed).

One of the clock faces includes the outside temperature, and another features a graphical representation of current weather conditions (sunny, cloudy or partly cloudy, rainy, and so on). The latter is my favorite because it also shows the outside temperature and the date and day of the week.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers.

If you’ve set an alarm time, that will be shown beneath the current time. When the alarm goes off, you can tap the top of the speaker to snooze it for 10 minutes, and the new alarm time will be displayed accordingly. Alexa will also play any reminders you’ve set for the day, including recurring ones (e.g., “It’s Tuesday, take the trash cans to the street.”)

Michael Brown/Foundry

Amazon offers at least a dozen alarm tones, or you can have the alarm trigger a particular artist, song, or genre of music to play on your favorite service (unfortunately for me, Qobuz doesn’t currently participate in this opportunity. Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and several other services—including Amazon’s own music-streaming services—do.) This and more can be accomplished with Alexa Routines. Finally, you can choose one or more smart lights, smart plugs, or light fixtures to turn on when the alarm sounds.

You can adjust the display’s brightness, and you’ll want to set it at the maximum if you’re using it anywhere other than on your nightstand. You won’t have trouble reading it when you’re relatively close to it, even if you’re nearsighted like me. There’s also an adaptive brightness feature that will automatically adjust the display according to ambient lighting conditions. If you’re particularly sensitive to light while you’re sleeping, you can even turn the display off.

The Amazon Echo Spot as a smart speaker

Three near-field microphones on top of the Echo Spot allow you to summon Alexa to do your bidding (anything from turning lights on and off to watering your garden—if you have the relevant smart home devices). Speak a command to turn a light on, and an icon will appear that you can touch to toggle between the two states (or dim the light, if it supports that feature). Support for Amazon’s Drop-in feature lets you use the Echo as a home intercom—provided you have other Alexa-enabled devices for it to connect to.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Those microphones can also listen for sounds—such as a dog barking, a baby crying, or an appliance beeping—and trigger your compatible smart home devices to perform an action. If you subscribe to Alexa Emergency Assist ($6/mo or $60/year, more for non-Prime members), you can even have Alexa call you if an Echo hears a smoke alarm sounding off. That service can also connect you to a trained agent who can provide further help in the event of an emergency.

An ultrasound sensor, meanwhile, can detect motion in the room and trigger Alexa Routines that can do things like turn on a lamp in the room at night. This privacy-friendly feature works by emitting ultrasonic sound waves through its speaker, which bounce off the walls in the room and come back to the Echo Spot’s microphones. When someone is moving about the room, these sound waves bounce off them instead. The speaker recognizes the changed patterns and interprets them as motion.

Michael Brown/Foundry

Alexa routines can also be triggered by events, including its own alarm clock function.

We’ve also already established that the Echo Spot is not a great audio speaker, but it does display album art while playing tunes—albeit it very tiny art.

What the Echo Spot can’t do

The Echo Spot is not a true smart display, so it can’t stream video, present slideshows of your favorite photos, show your security camera feeds, or display recipes and video news updates. And as I’ve already mentioned, the absence of a camera means it can’t make video calls, either.

On the bright side, the Echo Spot also can’t show you ads, as is becoming increasingly common on Amazon’s Echo Show devices. You can also make voice calls directly to phone numbers in North America and the United Kingdom.

Unlike some other Echo models, including the 4^th-gen Echo, 5^th-gen Echo Dot, and the Echo Pop, the Echo Spot cannot be configured as a range extender for an Eero-based mesh Wi-Fi network. That’s more than a little surprising given its price.

Should you buy an Amazon Echo Spot?

The 2024 edition of the Echo Spot is a great smart alarm clock and tabletop smart home controller. It’s just OK musically, but the other things it can’t do—make video calls, stream video, and show security camera feeds—you probably wouldn’t to use it for anyway, given its small display. Nor would we expect it to have a larger display, given its price tag.

On the other hand, Amazon could have included a battery-backup feature for the price, a failsafe conventional alarm clocks have offered for decades. And its inability to perform as a node in an Eero mesh network is disappointing, considering the half-as-expensive Echo Pop does.

That said, the Echo Spot is strong enough to be the only smart home controller for many homes, and its small footprint will be welcomed in smaller domiciles. Just have a real speaker on hand for listening to music.