exam with features, prices and specifications

Its impact on our lives may not be as strong as the one that brought the arrival of smartphones a little over ten years ago, but smart speakers have also landed with the firm intention of change our day by day. For good, of course. We have already been able to try Home, the proposal from Google, and HomePod, the smart speaker of Apple, so as not to miss the opportunity to test the third discord.

Although the smart speakers of other consumer electronics brands will hit the market in the coming months, those who "divide the cod" are, for the moment, foremost Amazon, Google and Apple. Their proposals are already in stores and, although their ambition is not exactly the same, their overall benefits, on paper, are similar. This is why the purpose of this analysis is threefold: to check what experience of use this Echo Plus offers us, identify what we can do with it and determine if it sounds really good. After all, it's first of all a speaker.

Amazon Echo Plus: technical specifications

In the pictures illustrating this article, you can see that the housing of this speaker is a cylinder with the power connector located next to its base and the interaction buttons at the top. Unlike Apple HomePod and Google Home, this Echo Plus does not incorporate a touch surface. Instead, it uses the more traditional mechanical buttons, a control system a little less sophisticated but equally effective.

Although we take a closer look at its sound performance later, I think it is interesting to note that the cylindrical shape of the speaker of this speaker is acoustically beneficial because it gives him more rigidity and prevents the appearance in its interior of stationary waves. This is a simple and effective way to reduce the color of the sound, which is simply a form of distortion that, as far as possible, it is better to delete.

The smart assistant built into this speaker it's Alexa, as expected if we take into account that it is an Amazon product. This artificial intelligence "speaks" Spanish since last October and can already be found in at least six proposals of this brand, including other smart speakers and the Smart Plug, which allows us to control any take current. with our voice

The only physical connector we will find in the case of this Echo Plus, beyond the necessary power outlet (it's a compact and easy-to-carry speaker, but it's not portable and, therefore, it's missing a battery), it's a minijack 3.5 mm that we can use to extract the audio and introduce it into this acoustic box. With regard to wireless connectivity, he WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth. This last connection interface includes A2DP profiles, which allows us to transmit the sound of our smartphone to Echo Plus and the latter to another Bluetooth speaker, and AVRCP, which allows voice control of other devices from this smart speaker.

On the other hand, like Apple's Home and Apple HomePod speakers, this Echo Plus has been designed to serve as home automation control center from which we can manage other Alexa-compatible devices that we have at home, such as smart cards, more speakers, lights or TVs, among other possible options. In this context, the Zigbee standard plays an important role, with which this Echo Plus is compatible.

Zigbee is a standard widely used in home automation that allows wireless and secure communication between multiple devices by implementing low-power links.

Zigbee is a widely used home automation specification that defines a set of protocols for wireless and secure communication between multiple devices via low-power digital delivery. A simpler way to understand what Zigbee is is to imagine it as a language that facilitates wireless communication of various devicesand which, therefore, corresponds very well to the needs of home automation systems.

This technology It has several advantages that have helped it to impose other options that also compete to gain a foothold in the world of home automation, such as the simplicity of the electronics needed to make communication possible (this is a crucial advantage for small appliances), its low consumption and its mesh topology, which allows to maintain the communication between the devices even when one of them, for some reason, breaks down.

AMAZON ECHO PLUS	Characteristics
ACUTE SPEAKER	Tweeter 20mm
INTERVENER MEDIA / SERIEUX	76 mm woofer
SOUND DIFFUSION MODE	360 degrees
Equalization of sound	Dolby
MICROPHONE	7 microphones with noise suppression
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE	Amazon Alexa
CONTROL OF DOMESTIC AUTOMATION	Yes
ZIGBEE CONTROLLER	Yes
PHYSICAL CONNECTIVITY	3.5mm minijack input / output
WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY	WiFi 802.11ac
BLUETOOTH CONNECTIVITY	A2DP sound distribution profile and AVRCP remote control profile
INTEGRATED SERVICES	Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn and others
DIMENSIONS	148 x 99 x 99 mm
WEIGHT	780 g
PRICE	149.99 euros

This is not luxurious, but it is well finished

Amazon has worked extensively on the design and construction of this enclosure. It does not have a luxurious finish, especially as the polycarbonate used in the plastic of the upper and lower parts, although not bad, is of better quality. Even in this case, it does not conflict with a product that combines so many technologies and at a reasonable cost (It's worth 150 euros when he is out of offer). For this price, we can not expect an ostentatious finish.

The fabric structure that surrounds the case has a pattern that reminds me a lot of the Apple HomePod, although the grid of the Echo Plus is thicker. In any case, the most important thing is that It is acoustically transparentwe must therefore hardly modify the sound waves that the acoustic box projects to our ears. Interestingly, the base of the speaker is not plastic; It's rubber. And I think it's a good idea that the designers of Amazon have chosen this material because its roughness prevents the speaker from moving over the surface on which we place it if we go along with the volume and the diaphragm excursion of the woofer transfers some of its energy to the enclosure.

The natural way of interacting with this smart speaker invites us to use our voice in the same way as when we speak to the voice assistant of our smartphone. By default, the keyword that causes the alarm and interprets our command is & # 39; Alexa & # 39;. We can say, for example, "Alexa, increase the volume". Logically, this is possible because the speaker listens and wakes up constantly when we pronounce the key word.

It is understandable that many users are suspicious given the obvious fact that the speaker constantly listens and records everything we say. For this reason, I think it's a good idea that Amazon has included a button on the top of the speaker. allows us to turn off the microphones at any moment. When you press this button, a red light will come on all the perimeter of the speaker and, in theory, the microphones will cease to collect what we say until you press it again above.

Next to the microphone deactivation button, we also have two others that allow us to increase and decrease the volume, as well as a fourth "Action" button that allows you to activate the assistant without having to invoke it. expressly by pronouncing the word "Alexa". If you notice every time I talked about the microphone, I did it in the plural and not in the singular. And does this smart speaker not incorporate a single microphone to capture our voice. He has seven.

Are they necessary? If we want him to hear our voice accurately, even if we talk to him from a distance and in any direction, yes. They are necessary. But having more microphones does not guarantee that the speaker software will be able to interpret our orders properly. To make this possible, Amazon engineers have come up with a noise cancellation algorithm which manages to effectively cancel the ambient noise and the music itself emitted by the speaker in order to make viable artificial intelligence correctly interpreting our requests.

I've tried it in several different use scenarios and with a lot of background noise, echoing, Echo Plus playing itself a music with a respectable sound pressure level, and all that is got out. The seven microphones and the noise cancellation algorithm they form a very valuable tandem which contributes positively to improving our experience as users. It would be frustrating to invoke the wizard and the fact that our order would have no effect if there was noise or if we were listening to music. But fortunately, that does not happen. Your response to this usage scenario, very common, is excellent.

Our smartphone is the best ally of this smart speaker

The time has come for us to verify what we can do with an Echo Plus. As we just saw to interact with him, we just have to use our voice, but if we want to make the most of it, we will have to install the Amazon Alexa app, available for iOS, Android and Fire OS, on our mobile phone. In fact, this is the first thing to do, because the configuration process and the connection of the speaker to our wireless network are made from this application.

Once installed on our smartphone, a very simple wizard will guide us through the configuration process. In a few minutes, we will have it ready and connected to our WiFi network because it is not necessary to configure anything because the speaker inherit the wireless configuration that we have activated in the mobile. From that moment, we can naturally interact with the voice assistant. We will have no choice but to take up the first challenge: ask Alexa to do something for us.

Here's a simple way to get into the flour: "Alexa, what can I say?" The assistant will answer by offering some examples that can help us understand what services can we access and what information can you provide us this smart speaker We may ask you to read an audiobook from our Kindle library, to play a radio station (the service that integrates the radio is tuned), to activate a timer, to set a alarm, to remind us of something at a certain time …

Of course, we can also order Alexa to play music. We may ask you to put songs of a certain genre, band or singer, or even to reproduce a specific theme. By default will search Amazon Music and it will be replicated, but if we have a paid account set up in Amazon Music or Spotify, we will use these services because they have a much larger catalog than the one provided by Amazon Music.

If we want to listen to our music in stereo and with the best possible quality, we can combine two Echo Plus speakers and support them with an Echo Sub subwoofer

If our preferred service is not one of these two services, or if we simply want to listen to the Echo Plus music we have stored on our smartphone or tablet, simply connect both devices via Bluetooth from from the Devices section. from the Amazon Alexa app. We also have the opportunity to Pair two identical speakers in tandem to listen to music in rigorous stereo, and even to connect one or two Echo speakers to subwoofer Echo Sub to improve low frequency reproduction.

And if we decide to do with several speakers of the Echo family, even if they are different models, and we distribute them in our house, they will behave as a multi-room sound system In addition to any of them, we can interact with others, listen to the same music throughout the house as a musical thread or hear a different source in each room, control Zigbee compatible home automation devices that we have installed, etc.

Among the resources we can use to get the most out of this smart speaker are Alexa skills, applications that can be managed by artificial intelligence from Amazon and help us extend the functionality of the speakers of this mark. They are installed and uninstalled from the store skills of the Amazon Alexa app and behave very similarly to the apps we all install on our smartphones. There are all kinds of news readers, cooking recipes, weather reports, educational tools, etc. We also have ours (Xataka Now, Directo al Paladar and Noticias SensaCine) and, of course, we invite you to try them if you are curious.

Another interesting feature offered by the Echo family's smart speakers is the creation of custom lists. We can create a shopping list, to-do lists, or any other list of ideas that come to your mind. To add and delete items, just ask the wizard more or less like this: "Alexa, add bananas to the shopping list". And ready. The interesting thing about lists is that we can manipulate them with our voice interacting with the speaker, while automatically updating them on our mobile phone in the Amazon Alexa app. This allows us to consult them whenever we want, even if we are not at home and there is no Echo speaker nearby.

A last attractive function in which it is worth stopping are the routines, which allow us to associate one or more actions with a sentence of our choice. From the Amazon Alexa application of our mobile, we can schedule a routine that leads, for example, the wizard to inform us of the weather and traffic status whenever we say "Alexa, hello" or any other phrase of our choice. . The routines look a lot like the macros we use in some office applications and they try to save us time and effort in the operations we do on a regular basis.

Sound quality: Dolby's hand feels

To users who opt for an intelligent speaker from Amazon and decide to pay the premium corresponding to this Echo Plus, the most expensive proposal of the Echo family, compared to Echo Dot, Echo Spot or Echo & # 39 to dry, they care about the sound quality. For those for whom this service is not very important and what they want is to use Alexa to control the home automation of their home or perform any other task we have reviewed in the previous section will suit them better, for example, an echo. Dot, which is much cheaper and allows Alexa to work just like in the Echo Plus.

It is clear that Amazon knows that users who buy the most expensive smart speaker expect their sound to be up to snuff. Before going into details, I suggest you briefly review its architecture. The reproduction of medium and low frequencies is responsible for woofer 76 mm, and triple Tweeter 20 mm, both excited by Neodymium magnets similar to those we can find in many speakers for high fidelity applications.

Amazon has not made public the characteristics of the amplifiers charged to excite these speakers, but we can be certain that it is class D amplifiers, ideal for compact devices that should consume little and dissipate a minimum of heat. possible I would also bet that two independent amplifiers reside inside the Echo Plus. One for each speaker. In any event, an important fact confirmed by Amazon is that the focus and sound equalization Dolby has been ordered, a company with a lot of experience in this field.

Apart from all this, does this speaker sound really good? S & # 39; he does it. If the recording is moderately neat, this acoustic box is capable of projecting in all directions (as I had planned before). It has an omnidirectional radiation pattern) a very detailed sound, with a very noble dynamics and a relatively low distortion, provided that, yes, we did not miss the volume. From my tests with a single speaker Echo Plus, we can fill the sound of a 40 square meter room. Of course, if we install two stereo tandems, we will get an even better sound because we can reconstruct the original stereo image.

From this speaker, I particularly like their means and their highs. They have neither the heat nor the details of a studio monitor or a high-fidelity speaker, but we can not demand these qualities of a 150 speaker. euros that also incorporates other technologies that go far beyond music reproduction. . Your "Achilles' heel" is, in my opinion, the reproduction of the extreme end, but it is understandable to keep in mind the compactness of its case and the small size of the diaphragm of its woofer. The basses are worth it, but they have neither the punch nor the resolution that the acoustic boxes can offer us with a larger speaker.

The "Achilles' heel" of this Echo Plus is the reproduction of the extreme extreme. Therefore, if we want to improve the sound quality, it makes sense to buy the sub subwoofer Echo.

Fortunately, this lack has a solution. If we want a more serious seriousness and more detailed, we can get the Echo Sub, the subwoofer that Amazon engineers have developed for extend the frequency response of your smart speakers. Of course, we should increase our budget by 130 euros more, what does it cost subwoofer. If we aspire to get the best sound possible and this expense fits into our budget, it's a good idea to buy it. But alone, a single speaker Echo Plus offers a convincing sound experience and aligned to what we can expect from a speaker at its price.

Before concluding this section, I would like to share with you two additional notes. Here's the first one: the respectable rigidity of the cylindrical enclosure that I told you about in the first paragraphs of the analysis is largely responsible for this more echo keep the distortion under control even with a respectable sound pressure level. In these conditions, if the speaker is not rigid enough, it vibrates. And if so, it emits sounds masking some of the music we want to hear. When this happens, the quality of the sound suffers and our experience is not so pleasant.

The last point is really a little advice. If you decide to buy an Echo Plus and want it to offer you the highest quality sound possible, I suggest you place it on a stable surface with a certain mass. If you place it on a table or on a thin shelf, it is possible that when you increase the volume above a certain threshold, the vibrations of the room will propagate on the surface on which you have placed the top loudspeaker.

And, when this happens, the same surface emits sounds and we will find the problem of masking that I have described two paragraphs above. A simple way to solve this is to place the speaker on a small base with a lot of mass, marble or granite, for example, so as to avoid any weight. the spread of microvibrations. It is not necessary at all that this base is much larger than the contact surface of the acoustic box, but it is interesting to note that it is several centimeters thick (at least two) so that its mass can absorb the annoying microvibrations. we talked before

Amazon Echo Plus: The opinion of Xataka

My feelings after thoroughly testing for ten days this Amazon smart speaker are positive. The interaction with Alexa is very nice thanks, in large part, to the effective sound and echo canceling technology that it incorporates and allows the speaker to listen to our demands even if there is a lot of noise in the environment. Of course, in this context, the sophistication of Amazon's artificial intelligence is also important, which, in my opinion, together with that of Google, is a clear step forward compared to Apple's AI and from Microsoft.

I also find that the simplicity of installation and connection of the speaker to our WiFi network is very positive. And of course, its ability to allow us to control compatible home automation elements that we have installed at home. In addition, the ability to increase the features of the speakers through skills I think it's a good idea. And finally, its overall sound quality I think it's satisfying in a product of its price.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, this forum could still be improved. With regard to sound quality, the purchase of subwoofer I feel obliged if we want to be able to deliver a serious with punch and detail. From another side the control by means of a touch-sensitive surface Like Apple HomePod and Google Home, it's more sophisticated and sophisticated, which is a perfect match for the smart speaker philosophy. And finally, the range of skills Available is small enough, but it is likely that little by little, we will have many more options available to us.

Finally, I can only share with you that this speaker of Amazon is a very good rival of Google Home, with which he clearly rivals in terms of performance and price, and Apple's HomePod, with which it competes in terms of functionality and functionality. The experience it offers us, even if it's a small step back if we stick to its sound quality and its finish. Of course, Apple's proposal is much more expensive (costs 349 euros), so, in my opinion, the price / performance ratio of this Echo Plus is noticeably more attractive. If you're looking for a smart speaker with a good user experience, balanced sound and not too expensive, this Echo Plus deserves to be on your list of candidates.

This product has been assigned to testing by Amazon. You can consult our policy of relations with companies.

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