Amazon is further cutting prices on its Echo speaker range with the new Echo Pop. This new model cuts a few sensors from the Echo Dot (4th or 5th generation) and simplifies the design to bring the retail price down to $40 while increasing the volume of the speaker’s one-touch driver.
While the Echo Pop offers most of the same functionality as the Echo Dot, the discounts on the Dot take a lot of sense when choosing an Echo Pop. It’s a decent smart speaker and does its job well, but it’s neither the smartest nor the cheapest of Amazon’s upcoming Alexa options, leaving it in a confusing place.
Amazon Echo Pop
The Echo Pop would have been a steal for an Alexa-powered smart speaker. It has decent sound and listens to commands well, but it trimmed some of the good stuff out of the Echo Dot without cutting enough of the price. And it doesn’t help that many times the Echo Dot is actually available for less than the new Pop.
- Brand
- Amazon
- Dimensions
- 3.9″ wide x 3.3″ deep x 3.6″ high
- Contact
- Bluetooth (A2DP), Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5GHz)
- colors
- Charcoal, Glacier White, Lavender Blossom, Midnight Teal
- Speakers
- 1.95 inch front speaker
- Smart assistants
- Alexa
- Decently rounded sound for a small speaker
- Colorful design
- Perceptual microphone
- Low retail price
- It dropped some smart sensors for the Echo Dot
- The maximum size is grating
- It’s easy to get an Echo Dot for cheaper
Price and availability
The Amazon Echo Pop costs $40 and is available directly from Amazon. Comes in four colors: black, white, lavender, and teal. Thanks to its newness, it has not seen any major deals yet to bring down this low price.
Design, hardware and what’s in the box
The Echo Pop sees a design shift from the orb-like lines of the Echo and Echo Dot. It stands out as a standout product, even if it’s effectively stepping in to fill the Echo Dot’s place as Amazon’s new, cheaper option. It looks almost like an Echo Dot that has been neatly cut in half, gently curving around the back side only to become completely flat relative to the front speaker side.
You can’t expect much from the bill of materials for such a low price. Simple plastic covers the back of the Echo Pop, though the face at least has a cloth-like appearance closer to the Echo Dots. While the Echo and Echo Dot place their LED light bars, which act as status indicators, around the base of the unit, the Echo Pop has a small arc of LEDs along its top edge.
I find the bar somewhat annoying to the Echo Pop’s aesthetic when it’s not lit, whereas it’s more subtle on the Echo and Echo Dot. The bar is very easy to see when lit on the Echo Pop, but it doesn’t have quite the same effect as the Echo lights and Echo Dots, which provide 360-degree illumination and illuminate the surrounding surface to some degree.
Near the back of the light bar is the Echo Pop, which has three microphones, two volume buttons, and a microphone mute switch that turns the lights red when toggled. There is a cylindrical power port on the back of the unit and the wires connect to a chunky power adapter for such a small device. It’s a shame not to see USB charging which could have allowed for greater flexibility. Still, Amazon’s choice at least simplifies the question of ensuring the Echo Pop gets enough power — which is a bit more of a question than asking around USB.
The 3.5mm jack doesn’t make a triumphant return on the Echo Pop, so there’s no plugging into a more powerful speaker system when you want a big music upgrade. The speaker driver on this model is slightly larger (1.95 inches) than the previous Echo Dot’s (1.73 inches). However, it’s not necessarily better (no side-by-side testing here, unfortunately), and neither can hold a candle to the standard Echo’s three-speaker arrangement. The Echo Pop continues to support Bluetooth for connecting to a secondary speaker, at least.
In addition to the Echo Pop’s wireless hardware, there’s continued support for extending mesh networks with Eero Wi-Fi networks. It’s a neat feature on the surface if you have an Eero setup and just want a little extra coverage for some basic web connectivity. However, it only has 100Mbps of bandwidth to share with a maximum of 10 devices, so it won’t replace a proper Eero unit as the backbone of your mesh network.
The Echo Pop can also join Amazon’s Sidewalk network, which links Amazon devices together in a kind of extranet to keep them all connected if you lose basic Internet access — a feature that I and some of my colleagues at Android Police aren’t keen on enabling but requires opting out (thankfully , this option is offered during setup).
What’s missing is perhaps more important than the hardware included in the Echo Pop. Amazon stripped out the temperature and motion sensors in order to make the Echo Pop. These sensors have allowed additional automation to the Echo Dot making it a smarter device. And the Echo Dot with Clock goes even further with an LED face that can display the time, temperature, and more at a glance.
My voice
The Echo Pop is a respectable little guy when it comes to audio. It pushes a lot of volume for a 100-square-foot room and even delivers bright on the porch where it handles road noise. It strikes a solid balance in its medium volumes – think 25-75%.
At maximum volume, the sound is not only too loud for a small space, but it’s also a bit annoying. Pressing the maximum volume level will cause some unwanted sound drops in some music as the extra loud sounds suck energy from other parts of the mix. Fortunately, the microphones do a great job of hearing Alexa’s command even while music is playing, so it’s still easy to change the volume on or off.
It’s quick and convenient to pull up a podcast or song, and the sound is well-rounded. The bass is present when not driving, and the mids and treble are bright and clear. It will do the trick for getting a little midday action with your favorite nannies. But if you really want to party, you’ll look elsewhere or try pairing it with another Echo device for double the sound.
Programs and features
The Echo Pop doesn’t have much Software experience Because it only takes advantage of the backend that comes with Amazon’s Alexa platform. The system starts with voice instructions in English, Spanish, and French, guiding you to set it up through the Alexa app on your phone or tablet. It’s a quick and easy process to connect the speaker and get it on a 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi network.
Once connected, most of the functionality comes from how to set up Alexa. You can link it to different apps and accounts, like a third-party calendar, so Alexa can take advantage of them. However, you will do this on your phone/tablet instead of asking Alexa to do it. If you ask Alexa to do something that isn’t set up, it will prompt you to use the app and send you the details in the app. This will appear in the Activity feed on the app’s home page rather than as a pop-up notification somewhere — a detail I didn’t pick up on right away.
Alexa has a large number of smart home integrations, so there’s a good chance that the products you add to your home will have a way to work with the Echo Pop, though that model doesn’t add anything meaningful that isn’t already present in the Echo Pop. You can also set up Alexa for home with voice recognition, so it knows what music to play or which calendar to update with new entries. If you want to learn more about all the smart features, you can learn all about Amazon Alexa here.
Competition
While the Echo Pop is the new budget option, the older Echo Dot has popular discounts that usually make it the cheapest option, often priced at $30 or less. While it may have a smaller speaker and a different design — aesthetics are a matter of personal preference — it has more functionality from its additional sensors while matching the Echo Pop in almost every other place.
The standard Echo (4th generation) has been around since 2020, but it’s still a great option for an upgrade. Although it retails for $100, that’s far from the price you’re likely to pay. Amazon constantly puts Echo devices on sale, and the Echo (4th generation) has seen several discounts bringing its price down to $60 and even $50. If you plan to listen to a lot of music on your speaker, an upgrade at this price will be worth it.
The Echo Pop manages to stay away from direct competition from Apple, which has the HomePod Mini priced at just $100 anywhere near it. The Google Assistant-powered Nest Mini comes in at $50, so the Echo Pop still falls short of that by a significant margin. The deciding factor between the two will likely come down to your smart assistant’s preferences.
The JBL Link Portable is often on sale – currently $60 at the time of writing – and offers more. It has Google Assistant built in, should have better sound, can play audio on the go with up to 8 hours of battery life off the charging dock and IPX7 waterproof protection.
Anyone more interested in a decent speaker than a smart assistant can look forward to any of these great Bluetooth speakers – quite a few of which offer great sound at affordable prices. Anker, Tribit, and Oontz have a good track record for good sound at low prices.
Should you buy it?
You can safely skip the Echo Pop unless it’s not In reality It’s cheaper than its siblings, the Echo and Echo Dot, and ideally a lot cheaper. If the Echo Dot is on sale for less than the Pop, it’s easily the better choice thanks to its extra functionality, and it may be worth the extra penny when it’s $10 more than the Echo Pop. If the Echo drops to $50 again, that’s also a much better buy than the $40 Pop.
If you’re just looking to outfit a few extra rooms in your home with Alexa access points that occasionally deliver acceptable audio, the Echo Pop will do just fine. It’s not the best.
Amazon Echo Pop
The Echo Pop is decent, but probably not the one you can get unless you just need a few extra speakers around the house and the Echo Dot isn’t on sale.
