I have six Amazon Echo smart speakers at home and have tested more, but my favorite is the Echo Dot with Clock. I love how the fabric-covered LED dot-matrix screen makes time unobtrusively accessible, shining its soft white light from my dresser across my dark, dark bedroom. (Alexa certainly has more time to ask.)
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Amazon has discontinued the Dot with Clock in favor of a more expensive and less flashy one.
“You can check the availability of the latest device on the product page, but if this generation of Echo Dot is sold with the watch, it will not be fulfilled,” Amazon spokeswoman Liz Roland told The Verge.
Amazon hasn’t told us why it’s leaving. At first, I mistakenly thought it might be due to hidden bugs – my own Echo Dot with Clock mysteriously froze a few weeks ago, became completely unresponsive to voice commands and stuck on the screen with images. Multiple resets didn’t help.
But after I successfully claimed that Amazon would send me a replacement echo, it started working again. (I had to reset and go through the setup process in the Alexa app multiple times to get it to work.)
When I was looking for a $60 Echo Dot with a clock, I was surprised to find Amazon. don’t stock it anymore—only updated models were available when I checked, though the blue model is back today at Amazon and Target. Instead, I took a chance on the company’s spiritual successor: the $80 Echo Spot, which replaces the matrix display with a screen.
But despite being more expensive, I find the Spot inferior for my purposes. While its screen isn’t too bright for a dimly lit bedroom, it’s not what I’d call visually pleasing. It never lets me forget that I’m looking at a cheap screen. Also, the entire screen is tilted up, presumably for the nightstand, not my tall dresser. There is no nightstand in my bedroom, Amazon is discontinuing.
My colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is currently working on a full Echo Spot overhaul and she likes it a lot more than I do!
But he says it doesn’t sound as good as the Dot either (although the sound is more directional), and it still doesn’t let you do something as simple as set an alarm by touch like you can. with smart screens. The main advantages are music playback controls and the ability to display the time, date, temperature and weather simultaneously.
Now that the Echo Dot is working with the watch again, I’m returning the Spot – and the money Amazon refunded me.
