Amazon Echo Dot (4th gen) review: The new Dot delivers a revamped look and (slightly) better sound

The revamped, fourth-generation Echo Dot has arrived, and it comes with a spherical design that sets it well apart from its smaller, flatter predecessors.

The revamped, fourth-generation Echo Dot has arrived, and it comes with a spherical design that sets it well apart from its smaller, flatter predecessors. But while it boasts an all-new look, the latest Echo Dot is essentially the same speaker as the (now steeply discounted) third-gen Dot, complete with onboard Alexa, stellar smart home capabilities, impressive communication features, and the ability to keep an ear on your home via Alexa Guard. And while we’re pleased with how the new Dot sounds, its front-firing driver doesn’t deliver a quantum leap over the older Dot’s audio quality. So yes, the fourth-gen Echo Dot is technically the best Dot yet, but only by a narrow margin.

Design

Available in charcoal, glacier white, and twilight blue flavors, the fourth-gen Echo Dot marks a major departure in terms of the speaker’s look and feel.

Instead of the hockey-puck design of the three previous Echo Dots, the new Dot has a taller, spherical shell, same as with the new EchoRemove non-product link and the Dot’s sibling, the refreshed Echo Dot with clockRemove non-product link. While it has the same 3.9-inch width of the previous Echo, the fourth-gen, 3.5-inch Echo Dot is nearly two inches taller, making it considerably bigger than its predecessor and roughly the size of a softball. Indeed, the new Dot looks like it was designed to be shown off rather than tucked away.

Ben Patterson/IDG

With its spherical design, the new Echo Dot is considerably larger than its compact predecessor.

The revamped Dot does share the older model’s fabric exterior, with the fabric on the new Dot covering about two thirds of the speaker, leaving a bare wedge in the rear.

Besides its new shell, the fourth-gen Echo Dot moves Alexa’s light rings from the top of the speaker down to its base, casting a nifty-looking glow on the surface upon which it’s sitting.

Buttons and interfaces

As with previous Echo Dots, the new Dot is outfitted with volume up/down, mic mute, and action buttons that peek out from the fabric at the top of the speaker, although the buttons are now more tightly grouped together than they were on previous Dots.

When you tap the volume buttons, a white ring appears, and it either grows or shrinks in length depending on whether you’re adjusting the volume up or down. Pressing the mic mute button makes the Alexa ring glow red, indicating that Alexa isn’t listening to your conversation. Pressing the “action” button wakes Alexa, or it can silence an alarm or reset the speaker if you press and hold it for 25 seconds. But since you can wake Alexa with your voice or ask her to snooze an alarm, most Dot users (myself included) never bother with the action button.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Borrowing a feature from the first-gen Echo Dot with clock, you can tap the top of the fourth-gen Echo Dot to snooze alarms.

Speaking of snoozing alarms, the new Dot comes with a new “tap to snooze” gesture, which actually first appeared on the first-gen Echo Dot with clock. The gesture does exactly as it says: just tap the top of the speaker with more than one finger (you don’t have to press a specific button) to snooze an alarm for nine minutes, handy for getting more shut-eye without rousing yourself for an Alexa chat.

On the back of the fourth-gen Dot, you’ll find a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting a wired speaker, a feature that’s conspicuously missing from Google’s equivalent Nest Mini smart speaker. There’s also a barrel-shaped power port for connecting the Dot’s five-foot power cord, which (same as the older Dot) terminates in a chunky, outlet-blocking 15-watt power supply.

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In the rear of the new Echo Dot is a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting a wired speaker or headphone, along with a barrel-shaped port for the AC adapter.

Setup

My Echo Dot review unit came pre-paired with my Amazon account (an option that you can request while ordering the speaker on Amazon.com), which made the setup process ridiculously easy. After plugging in the Dot, I fired up the Alexa mobile app and was immediately greeting up a pop-up that read, “Echo Dot can be set up.” I pressed Continue, selected my Wi-Fi network (I didn’t need to enter my password, since I’d done than for previous Echo installations), and a few seconds later, boom—the Dot was connected and ready to go.

If you’re new to Echo speakers and Alexa in general, the setup process is only slightly more involved. After you’ve powered up the Dot, installed the Alexa app and signed in with your Amazon account, you just tap More > Add a Device > Amazon Echo. Once the Alexa app has discovered the speaker, it’ll step you through the process of adding it to your home Wi-Fi network, and then it will help you add the Dot to a room (such as Master Bedroom, Kitchen, Office, etc.) and verify the street address where you’ll be using it (for such purposes as giving you local weather conditions and driving directions).

Alexa voice commands and smart home control

The Echo Dot’s killer feature is Alexa, and those who are already familiar with Echo speakers know what to expect. Chatty, intuitive, and ever friendly, Alexa can field a dizzying number of questions and requests, from giving you weather reports and settings timers and alarms to ticking off your schedule and even telling jokes. In my tests on the Echo Dot, Alexa responded to my queries almost instantly, although the same could be said of the previous Dot.