The Best Amazon Echo Speaker Is $80 Right Now

The Amazon Echo Dot line has long been a good choice if you’re looking for a compact, cost-effective way to enter the Alexa smart home ecosystem, combining decent sound quality with versatile smart home capabilities. And right now, the most recent Amazon Echo Dot Maxreleased late last year and offering improved audio and connectivity features, is on sale for $79.99 (originally $99.99) in all colors.

This speaker received a PCMag Editors’ Choice Award, who noted that it offers “fairly strong bass frequencies considering its small size.” At 6.1 x 5.6 x 5.8 inches, it’s more compact than the previous Echo, with a new look that might remind you of the Death Star: It’s a sphere with a large, flattened volume plate that makes the buttons more visible, and a light ring that shines toward where you’re speaking and displays the volume level as a white arc. (One downside: The smaller size means a smaller woofer than its predecessor, although PCMag said the bass is still “reasonably deep.”)

One of the main points of the Dot Max is its usefulness as a voice assistant. It has Amazon Alexa built-in and Amazon Prime members can get a free upgrade to the Alexa+ AI Assistant (normally $20/month). The Amazon Echo Dot Max supports Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E, serves as a hub for smart home devices like Zigbee, Thread, and Matter, and includes Wi-Fi radar, ultrasonic, temperature, and ambient light sensors that detect your presence in the room.

While the Echo Dot Max is a good choice with this discount, if you plan to use it primarily for listening to music, the latest Echo Dot (currently $50) may be enough.