This is great and all, but when the time comes to actually invest in a new Echo device for your home — thus upgrading it to " smart home" status — it can be hard to decide which one to get. I use stereo LINE OUT to 2RCAs from a 3rd Gen Dot to my HiFi system (and assume I'm getting 16bit/44MHz? That feature just arrived as an update on the fourth-gen Echo and is also coming to the fourth-gen Dot later this year, so it’s not really a reason to upgrade to the fifth-gen Dot on its own.

I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and a THX-certified home theater professional, and I’m here to help you understand 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and even 8K (and to reassure you that you don’t need to worry about 8K at all for at least a few more years). You don’t have to press any buttons, and you can even engineer routines for yourself ahead of time to set these processes in motion at a certain time in your home. The speaker’s microphones are always listening for the wake word or trigger sounds unless you mute the device using the physical mute button or by telling Alexa to mute.On the top are the familiar four buttons: two for adjusting volume, one for cutting off the microphone and another to make Alexa listen if it can’t hear you shouting the wake word.

Voice assistants can set alarms and timers, control other smart devices around your home, remind you of appointments. Thanks to the large display size, the Echo Show 15 makes a great kitchen TV, especially with the included Fire TV experience and the Alexa voice remote. Silent Shout” is a particularly punishing sub-bass-heavy song, though, and the Echo Dot sounds significantly better with other music.

Mashable is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without express written permission. Since the intelligence of Echo devices lies in the cloud, users do not have to update the software version that it is currently running. When my laptop connected to the Dot, I got speeds of 25Mbps up and 12 down in an area of my house where I would usually get 70 / 26 from my 1. When new Smart products are launched, there may also be a delay before certain Apps become available. If you have light bulbs, thermostats, or streaming media players that are compatible with Alexa, you can control their activity with the Echo Dot.