The Echo Studio from Amazon is blisteringly loud and puts the myriad polite little plant pot speakers on the market to shame. And teenagers should be allowed nowhere near it
Echo Studio
£189.99, amazon.co.uk
It’s somehow difficult to take voice-controlled smart speakers seriously as music players. It might be because you’re asking them to play Pink Floyd one second, and then asking them to time your boiled egg.
It also could be because the instant I turn one on, my son runs into the room and yells ‘Alexa, where’s my trousers?’ or similar, then runs away chortling hysterically at his own wit.
Like all Echo devices, the Echo Studio is incredibly easy to set up, with a robot voice announcing that it’s ‘calibrating’ itself to your room
Echo Studio is Amazon’s latest attempt at a ‘hi-fi’ Echo device, and it’s certainly a burly piece of kit. It’s bigger even than Apple’s distinctly porky HomePod – and armed with 330w of power and a 5.25in bass driver.
Like all Echo devices, it’s incredibly easy to set up, with a robot voice announcing that it’s ‘calibrating’ itself to your room. I’m not sure that this actually does anything, but it feels pleasingly sci-fi.
It’s Amazon’s latest attempt at a ‘hi-fi’ Echo device, and it’s certainly a burly piece of kit
The pitch is that this can handle ‘hi-res’ music, and ‘3D Audio’, both of which Amazon now offers as downloads. This is mostly hocus-pocus: there’s barely any 3D music on offer. The real reason you’d buy the Studio is that it sounds far better than previous Echo devices.
It’s blisteringly loud, with two midrange speakers firing left and right, and while it won’t match a ‘proper’ stereo (ie a boring old set-up with a player and two speakers), it outperforms most of the polite little plant pots sold as smart speakers with contemptuous ease.
Don’t buy this for teenage children, would be my advice.