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The 14 Best Amazon Echo And Alexa Speakers (2024): We’ve Tested Them All

Amazon’s family of Alexa-enabled devices is vast. From the spherical Echo to the swiveling Echo Show 10, you can get Alexa into your home in many ways. These devices can answer your questions, help you order essentials, set timers, play all sorts of audio content, and even function as the control hub for your growing smart home. These are our favorite Amazon Echo- and Alexa-compatible speakers for every home and budget.

The best time to buy any Amazon speaker is during a major sale event like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, as there usually are steep discounts. If you’re trying to decide which smart devices might be best for you, be sure to check out WIRED’s picks in our roundups, including the Best Smart Speakers, Best Smart Displays, and Best Bluetooth Speakers. We also have guides on setting up your Echo speaker, creating Alexa routines, and the best tricks an Echo Show can do.

Updated August 2024: We’ve added the Echo Dot (5th Gen) as a budget sound pick, the Echo Spot (2nd Gen) as our new bedside table pick, and a new section on other Amazon Echo speakers we’ve tested.

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Photograph: Amazon

Best OverallAmazon Echo (4th Gen)

Amazon’s fourth-generation Echo (8/10, WIRED Recommends) notably changed the shape of the cylindrical speaker into a speaker ball. Unless you have a personal vendetta against Amazon (you might), this is the best smart speaker you can get for around $100. Amazon has dialed in its digital signal processing and sound quality over the previous three Echos, and the rounded edges here help fidelity. The current Echo comes with Amazon’s AZI Neural Edge processor too, which helps it recognize speech better than ever.

It works in any room in the house. Use it in the kitchen for recipes and timers, in the bedroom for news and weather, or in the bathroom for shower sing-alongs. It’s compact, sounds decent, and is well-suited to everything you’d want a smart speaker to do. If music quality is your priority, scroll to the Echo Studio and Sonos speakers below, which are our favorite Alexa speakers for listening to music.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Best DisplayAmazon Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen)

The Echo Show 8 has been our favorite smart display for Alexa for three generations in a row, with the 2023 third-gen model as our latest pick. We like this size more than the 5- and 10-inch versions, the smaller of which felt like a weird smartphone, the larger like a weird tablet that spins around everywhere. This one’s like Goldilocks’ perfect porridge: It’s big enough that weather updates, video chats, and recipes show up clearly, but compact enough that it doesn’t take up too much countertop space. Amazon has also added Widgets to the Echo Show 8, so you can choose up to three informative little squares to pop up on the screen.

The third-gen model is a little pricier than the previous one because it adds a smart home hub and spatial audio. If you don’t think you’ll use those abilities, the cheaper second-gen Echo Show 8 ($130) is still a great choice.