Let’s be honest: We all have a love-hate relationship with alarm clocks. I mean, we love the idea of ​​something that helps us wake up on time, but at the same time, we hate it when it’s really early in the morning. But what if you could personalize your alarm and make your alarm clock do more than just ring? Imagine setting your favorite song as your alarm or assigning different songs to different alarms depending on your mood and time of day. Or maybe you’re just in the mood to have a conversation with someone in bed. Imagine you could just say, “Alexa, what’s going on in India right now.” Looks fancy and fun right?

Well, Amazon has introduced its next-generation Echo Spot in India, a smart alarm clock that does more than just wake you up. The device features a small touch screen, a 1.73-inch front-firing speaker, and the Alexa smart assistant. It comes with plenty of customizable options, letting users set up custom displays with different watch faces and color options. What else? You can also set custom music alarms, play music, podcasts, audiobooks, and display media information on the screen. Another feature is that the Echo Spot integrates with smart home devices, supports voice calls and announcements, and includes privacy features like a microphone off button.

The price of the new Amazon Echo Spot in India is Rs 8,999. However, it is available for Rs 6,449 under a limited time introductory offer. It is a fancy smart watch, but it is also quite expensive. So, the question is: is it worth it, and what difference does it make sitting by your bed? Let’s find out.

cute and compact

The design of Amazon Echo Spot is as small and compact as a half egg. But with an oval cutout at its base so you can place it on a table. The device I am reviewing is black in color and the overall design is quite clean. There’s a rubber rim on the bottom of the Echo Spot that keeps it stable and resting on a table.

On the back side there is a socket for connecting the power cord. On the rounded top, you’ll find three buttons: volume up, volume down, and a microphone button that turns off either microphone. The same button is also required to pair the device with the app on the phone and connect the device to WiFi when setting it up. On the front, the Echo Spot has a touch screen in the top half and a front-firing speaker below that.

While the idea of ​​the touch screen is smart and it offers many functions – which I’ll explain shortly – the display size could have been larger. Although the display area occupies more than half of the circle, the actual screen is very small and does not fully utilize the available space. It would have been better if it had a slightly larger display.

As far as the speaker is concerned, the front-firing speaker is covered with fiber mesh. Overall, the Echo Spot’s design is compact, sturdy, and undeniably cute as a bedside companion.

Using Echo Dot

When you’re using an Amazon Echo Spot it needs to be plugged in. This is standard with smart speakers, but I think a smaller battery option would have been better. As it stands, the device turns off as soon as you switch off or experience a power outage, making it unusable in such situations. This is not an issue in countries like the US, where power cuts are uncommon, but in India imagine you have installed an alarm, but just as it is about to go off, the power gets cut! Unusual use case, but possible. I mean, a battery inside the Spot would have been nice.

Once turned on, the device allows you to set custom wallpapers, check the time, date and more, which is quite useful. I especially liked the feature of setting custom alarms with your favorite songs, taken from the Internet.

The touch screen also comes in handy and makes it easy to control the device and manage various settings. Although the display is bright and easy to navigate, it sometimes lags, which I believe is a UI issue. This issue was more noticeable initially, but after receiving a few updates, the lag reduced significantly.

The speaker inside the Spot is quite loud and delivers clear, crisp audio with decent bass. It is suitable for casual listening and responds efficiently to Alexa commands, including initiating calls.

Speaking of Alexa, the virtual assistant works similarly to other assistants by helping with tasks like controlling devices with voice commands, managing smart devices, or providing information like weather and news from the Internet. It’s fun and useful for casual conversation. Especially children will like it. My 5-year-old niece loved it and used Alexa to listen to poems or learn new words. Alexa assisted them in dictation in both Hindi and English languages ​​with the help of screen and displayed the words on the screen, helping them learn in a better and fun way.

That said, although Alexa is smart, it’s not the smartest or best virtual assistant available today. I mean, Alexa used to be queen of the hill a few years ago. We are now in the era of LLM and ChatGPT. With the advent of AI in assistants, virtual assistants have become even smarter. For example, Google’s Gemini in Live Voice mode not only takes user commands but can also carry on a conversation, making Alexa feel a little less smart and outdated.

This does not harm Alexa. In fact, it’s quite good, and for me, it’s the only feature of the Spot that makes its price worth it. Not always but sometimes. For example, when I saw my niece having so much fun with it I thought, the price is definitely 100 percent worth it. If you’re getting this for kids, I believe it’s a useful gadget. It can be a good aid for children to learn and listen to songs or rhymes while away from their smartphones or tablets.

amazon echo spot review verdict

The Amazon Echo Spot is a great gadget to add near your bed. It looks beautiful, it’s sturdy, and it does more than just show you the date and time or set an alarm. Not only does it allow you to set calls hands-free, but you can also personalize the tunes or music you want your alarm to wake you up to.

Alexa is making smart watches even smarter, helping you not only seamlessly control your worthy smart devices, but also making it fun to give commands for quick music-listening sessions. Just say, “Alexa, play this,” and the voice assistant will follow your command.

As I said, it’s not the smartest virtual assistant right now and it has its limitations. Whether it justifies the price really depends on whether you really need a smart alarm clock that also works as a virtual assistant. As a smart watch, I believe its price is too high. But if you have kids who can use it as a fun tool as well, it’s totally worth it. And even more so because it can even sing lullabies or tell bedtime stories when babies are trying to sleep.