Amazon Echo Dot 3rd Generation (Charcoal)

Meet the all-new Echo Dot 3rd Generation. Our most popular Echo is now even better. With a new speaker and design, Echo Dot is a voice-controlled smart speaker with Alexa, perfect for any room. Just ask for music, news, information, and more. You can also call almost anyone and control compatible smart home devices with your voice.

Play music using your voice with the Amazon Echo Dot. Use your voice to play a song, artist, or genre through Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, and others. With compatible Echo devices in different rooms, you can fill your whole home with music. Also listen to Audible, podcasts, radio stations, or pair with Fire TV to voice control movies and entertainment.

Amazon Echo Dot: Simplify everything with one device. Make your life easier at home. Use your voice to set timers, add items to lists, and create calendar events and reminders. You can also check the news, weather, or traffic. Ask for sports scores, movie showtimes, restaurant hours, or information.

Voice control your smart home with just one smart speaker. Switch on the lamp before getting out of bed, turn on the coffee maker on your way to the kitchen, or dim the lights from the couch to watch a movie—all without lifting a finger.Control multiple devices with a single voice command, like locking the doors and turning off the lights at night. Learn more about over 10,000 compatible smart home devices, including lights, thermostats, TVs, and more.

Call family and friends hands-free. Call almost anyone hands-free using your voice. Use Drop-In to instantly connect to another compatible Echo at home or send an announcement across Echo devices, like calling the family for dinner or reminding the kids to go to bed.

Amazon Echo Dot: Skills. Alexa has more than 50,000 skills and counting. Skills are like apps and help you do more such as playing Jeopardy!, meditating with Head space, and falling asleep to rain sounds. Create your own personal skills and custom responses with Alexa Skill Blueprints. Just say "Alexa, help me get started with skills."New skills are being added all the time. Discover them in the skills section of the Alexa app or visit the skills store.

Amazon Echo Dot: Design. The 3rd Generation Amazon Echo Dot is easier on the eyes than either of Amazon's two previous Echo Dots. It offers rounded edges that help make the Dot look less like a hockey puck, and the fabric grille around the outer edge feels modern and classy simultaneously. (Amazon has been taking pointers from the Google Home Mini, apparently.)

Key Features:

• Meet Echo Dot - Our most popular smart speaker with a fabric design. It is our most compact smart speaker that fits perfectly into small spaces.
• Improved speaker quality - Better speaker quality than Echo Dot Gen 2 for richer and louder sound. Pair with a second Echo Dot for stereo sound.
• Voice control your music - Stream songs from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Sirius XM, and others.
• Ready to help - Ask Alexa to play music, answer questions, read the news, check the weather, set alarms, control compatible smart home devices, and more.
• Voice control your smart home - Turn on lights, adjust thermostats, lock doors, and more with compatible connected devices.
• Connect with others - Call almost anyone hands-free. Instantly drop in on other rooms in your home or make an announcement to every room with a compatible Echo device.
• Alexa has skills - With tens of thousands of skills and counting, Alexa is always getting smarter and adding new skills like tracking fitness, playing games, and more.
• Designed to protect your privacy - Built with multiple layers of privacy protections and controls, including a microphone off button that electronically disconnects the microphones.

The fabric mesh design helps the Amazon Echo Dot blend in with the rest of the refreshed Amazon Echo line-up, which received a fabric-covered makeover with last-year's refresh. As a result, the new Echo Dot comes in colors to match the rest of the range, too, with Charcoal, Heather Grey and Sandstone shades.

On the top of the Echo Dot you'll find four familiar buttons that consist of volume up and down, microphone mute and Alexa, as well as a four microphone array.

Activating Alexa either via the button along the top or by saying its name triggers the flashing blue ring of light that you're used to seeing on other Alexa devices — though, on one of the units we were sent, there appeared to be a short (<1s) delay in between when we said the wake word and when Alexa started listening.

Spin the unit around to the back and you'll find the power jack plus an auxiliary 3.5mm jack that can be used to connect the Amazon Echo Dot to any speaker with a matching jack. Unfortunately, however, Amazon doesn't include one of these cables in the box and the accompanying charger, which used to be micro USB, is now a proprietary design.