![]() ![]() RELATED: How to Control Your Smarthome Products with the Amazon EchoĪbsolutely. Can You Control Smarthome Products With The Echo Dot? The remote has more than paid for itself in the sheer entertainment value of trolling the kids in our house by talking to them through the Alexa in the kitchen. Really though, the true benefit of the remote is the “Simon says” function. ![]() If your Echo Dot is plugged into your stereo in the living room, you can trigger commands via the remote in the kitchen or upstairs (instead of yelling into the other room). Like the Echo, the Echo Dot is extensible with the Echo Remote–and it’s just as useful on the Dot as it is on the Echo. RELATED: How to Extend the Reach of Your Amazon Echo with a Voice Remote ![]() ![]() Does the Echo Dot Work with the Echo Remote? We wish Alexa’s voice would go through the Dot’s built-in speakers when hooked up to a stereo, but it doesn’t, so you’ll have to figure out the best way to hook it up in your home. Not even Alexa saying “Okay” or reading you the weather–it’ll all go to your stereo, which doesn’t really make sense given how the Dot is supposed to be used. There is one downside to this, however: If your stereo is set to a different input–like your TV instead of your Echo Dot–you won’t hear any audio from the Echo Dot. That said, the speaker is perfectly serviceable for things like getting feedback from Alexa, hearing the news, waking you up in the morning with an alarm, and so on. The Echo Dot’s speaker isn’t fantastic, but it’s comparable to the quality of a laptop speaker–which is to say it’s a bit tinny and you really won’t want to use it as your primary music speaker. RELATED: How to Make the Echo Dot Battery Powered (and Put It Anywhere You Want) Do I Need Bluetooth Speakers?īehind inquiries about whether or not your need a full-size Echo to go with the Dot, the biggest question is: what about the speaker? The removal of the big speaker is the immediately obvious change, but it’s less obvious that you can use the Dot without an external speaker. If you do have existing Alexa-enabled devices like the original Echo, an Echo Tap (Amazon’s battery-powered Bluetooth Echo), or 2nd generation Amazon Fire TV, the Echo Dot simply acts as another Alexa unit within your home so you get better coverage (both for commands and for features like music playback). You do not need any other Echo or Amazon product (like the Amazon Fire TV) to use the Echo Dot. The Echo Dot is a totally independent product in the Echo product line. The indicator ring still flashes orange when you plug it in for the first time, you still need to connect to the Dot to program it with your Wi-Fi credentials, and Alexa is still ridiculously cheerful during the whole process. In fact, you can follow along step-for-step with our guide to Echo setup and configuration here–just substitute every instance of “Amazon Echo” with “Amazon Echo Dot”. The setup process is identical to the original Echo. RELATED: How to Set Up and Configure Your Amazon Echo The price is almost 75% less, but the functionality is nearly 100% the same.įurthermore, all of the features and commands that work with the Amazon Echo work with the Echo Dot: you can ask it questions like, “What’s the news today?” (and even fine tune the weather, traffic, and sports updates to your liking), you can ask it to play you music (even through Spotify), and even bombard it with questions about measurement conversions and history trivia. The trade-off, we’ll think you’ll quickly see, is more than worth it as it drops the price of the Echo platform from $180 for the full-size Echo to just $50 for the Echo Dot. Just because the beefy speaker is gone doesn’t mean it’s watered down, though. RELATED: How to Fine Tune Weather, Traffic, and Sports Updates on Your Amazon Echo Instead, The Echo Dot is designed to be hooked up to a set of external speakers. The main difference between the echo and Echo Dot is the speaker: The Echo Dot is essentially the top portion of the regular Amazon Echo, without the beefy speaker underneath it. Is it an extension of the Echo? Is it a totally independent product? What do you need to get full use out of it? Even after reading the product documentation, we had a bunch of questions just like everyone else. There’s a bit of confusion over what exactly the Echo Dot is. ![]()
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