Second-gen Echo Plus review: best Alexa speaker with a Zigbee hub and the temperature sensor is a great addition but its audio quality lags behind the Sonos One
Smart speakers and voice assistants are everywhere these days. We're practically drowning in all the devices announced by major manufacturers in recent months.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after CNET found that the original Echo Plus fell short as a Zigbee smart home hub, Amazon is back with a second generation that appears to have fixed the hub side of the pitch and added a temperature sensor — but the audio-quality gap persists. The benchmark hasn't moved either: the Sonos One was already reviewed as sounding better than Google Home or the original Echo while carrying Alexa itself.
That split defines the product: Amazon is selling integration and sensing, Sonos is selling sound, and both ship the same voice assistant. The cheaper $99 Echo from the same season shows Amazon willing to compete on price below both.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the two now face a cleaner trade-off: the second-gen Echo Plus for built-in Zigbee hub duty and temperature sensing, the Sonos One for music quality — with Alexa available on either.
- The temperature sensor nudges the Echo Plus further toward always-on home-infrastructure duty rather than speaker-first use, a role the first-gen review said the hardware wasn't ready for.
Second-order effects
- Sonos's remaining differentiator against Amazon narrows to audio quality alone, since Alexa integration — its selling point in the One review — is no longer exclusive ground; its later turmoil under CEO Tom Conrad, including the app fiasco and executive departures, lands in exactly the window where that differentiation matters most.
- Zigbee device makers gain a larger installed base of hub-equipped speakers, making native Zigbee support a lower-risk bet than proprietary bridges for accessory vendors.
Third-order effects
- If each Echo generation keeps absorbing more hub functions — a line that runs through the 2020 Echo's room-filling-sound refresh to the 2025 Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio running Alexa+ — the smart speaker consolidates into the default control plane of the home, with audio fidelity becoming a premium-tier feature rather than the core purchase reason.
- That structure pushes specialist audio brands like Sonos toward either premium positioning or deeper platform dependence on the assistants they integrate — a tension visible across the coverage of Sonos's leadership changes and product restarts.
The trend: Smart speakers are evolving from music devices into ambient smart-home hubs, splitting the market between integration-first commodity hardware and premium audio specialists.