The Amazon Echo Input is reviewed by Rob Waugh

The Amazon Echo Input is cheaper than the Echo Dot (and is not shaped like a weird plant pot!)

Amazon Echo Input

£34.99, amazon.co.uk 

Fashionable though it is, I don’t actually like listening to music through a device shaped like a weird plant pot. Perhaps I’m showing my age here.

In the past couple of years, Google’s Home and Amazon’s Echo speakers have taken over – with the tech companies understandably eager that we hurl out all previous hi-fi equipment to make room for them, enjoying an astounding new world where our music systems also allow us to order groceries.

Amazon Echo Input

You just plug it in via either a headphone cable or Bluetooth, and suddenly you can forget dreary old discs and instead enjoy the modern pleasure of Alexa replying ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand that’

So Amazon’s Echo Input is a welcome arrival: it’s Echo, minus the speaker, so it works via your existing hi-fi. You just plug it in via either a headphone cable or Bluetooth, and suddenly you can forget dreary old discs and instead enjoy the modern pleasure of Alexa replying ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand that’.

Input is £15 less than the Echo Dot, the puck-shaped runt of the Echo litter (which has a speaker, albeit a pretty horrible one).

The four far-field microphones can pick up your voice even if you’re blasting music at high volume, and there’s a Mute button for those private moments when you’d prefer Jeff Bezos not to be listening in.

There are a few hiccups with Bluetooth: many hi-fis power off when not in use, which means you’ll have to reconnect manually. That’s a headache. But it works well via 3.5mm cable (although a choice of connectors would have been nice) and the tiny gizmo sits discreetly on top of a ‘proper’ hi-fi – ie, one with two speakers – and no resemblance to a plant pot.

 

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