Amazon Echo (2020) review: has loud, room-filling sound with bass you can hear and feel and good voice response, but music can sometimes sound overly processed
Amazon's latest Echo brings room tuning and impressive sound quality to the $100 price point — The smart speaker competition this year is the hottest it's ever been.
Context & Ripple Effects
This review closes a three-year arc in which Amazon pushed real hi-fi into cheap cylinders: the 2017 Echo redesign hit comparable sound at $99, the third-gen Echo Dot added stereo pairing but still lacked bass, and the $200 Echo Studio arrived as the dedicated audiophile tier in 2019.
The 2020 Echo now collapses much of that gap at $100 with room tuning and audible bass, while its sibling Echo Dot (2020) earns praise for sound and mics despite a harder-to-mount spherical shape — leaving the $200 Studio tier looking squeezed from below.
First-order effects
- $100 buyers get room-tuned, bass-forward sound that previously required stepping up to the Studio's five-driver hardware, sharpening the value question for every Echo above this price.
Second-order effects
- Google, Apple, and other smart-speaker rivals face a tougher bar at the sub-$150 tier just as the category hits what the review calls its hottest competition yet; the eventual outcome shows up five years later when Amazon restructures the line entirely around Alexa+ devices like the Echo Dot Max and revised Studio, with the Studio judged underwhelming.
Third-order effects
- If flagship-grade audio keeps trickling down to entry prices while assistants become the differentiator, hardware stops being the moat — consistent with Amazon later raising first-party device prices to offset memory and storage costs rather than competing on spec alone.
The trend: Smart speakers are commoditizing premium audio at mid-range prices, pushing Amazon's differentiation from drivers and bass toward the assistant software layered on top.