All-New Echo Dot (5th Gen, 2022 release) | Smart speaker with Alexa | Glacier White

I started out with amazon about 6 years ago. At some point, after ‘the a-queen’ pissed me off for the last time (we’ve all been there!), i made the move to the google eco-system. And life was good for a long time. In the meantime, i watched amazon continue to invest in new products and new features. But google was doing what i wanted and i continued to invest in their hardware. However, at some point google engineers decided that we all wanted to hear more from our smart devices. Commands that used to simply prompt a ‘ding’ at some point became ‘ got it! Playing (artist) from your google playlist on kitchen music’. And when you simply wanted to pause or stop, it was the same thing: ‘ got it! Stopping music on kitchen music’. So like if someone called on the phone while music was playing you had to wait till ‘g-man’ was done spouting off to answer. Or changing music during a party with voice command literally became embarrassing. Going online it turns out a lot of people complain about this and google simply chooses to turn a deaf ear to these complaints. This year (2022) i decided to look at the new echo eco-system. So for black friday i ordered the new dot v5 to make the comparison. Well, much to my pleasure, amozon has decided that less is more. When i ask alexa to stop playing music i am met with a simple ‘ding!’. How refreshing! So… Not looking good google! At the same time my house is solar powered so i’ve bee changing my house over to electric heating (from oil). This presents a huge opportunity to employ smart home technology to conserve energy. Well, turns out amazon has leapt out in front of google in features. Temp sensors?! Motion detection?! Wow! And low and behold it all works! Actually, move beyond smart thermostats. Imaging filling your house with speakers and being able to create a new heating zone with each one. I use lutein caseta hardware. Their switches integrate perfectly with alexa. Learn how to wire in a relay and voila! The possibilities are pretty extensive. Google is so far behind on this stuff, they’re stuck in the ‘we can answer more questions’ mode. Well, hello amazon! Sorry you lost $10 billion dollars last year. I promise going forward i’ll be helping you get some of it back (lol). And to google: sorry you couldn’t learn that less can be more. Your loss!

I now have 3 echo’s (4th gen) 3 dot’s(4th gen) 1 dot(5th gen) and 2 dot’s (2nd gen). As far as the echo smart speakers, i love them. They sound great on their own or paired together in a stereo configuration(much better). To have synchronized sound throughout the entire house as easy as this is just awesome. Having smart lights and plugs, everything is voice controlled. Even my smart tv since it’s alexa ready. After i updated my software, since i kind of forgot i had those old dot’s, everything set themselves up on their own. I of course had to tell them what room they were in. It wasn’t hard to set up my house and now it’s all voice activated. The upgrade to high def digital sound in amazon music is a must, you will be able to hear the difference. Since i got my gen 2 dot’s, which were a pain in the a@# to control my lights by voice and music only sounded good through my stereo, they have greatly improved. You can get an echo, not the dot, for 50 bucks on sale. It’s comparable to something worth 3 or 4 times that. The gen 5 dot sounds great in a smaller room. Good base for such a little thing. The 4th gens were good but the 5th is a little clearer and deeper.

I have two original dots and thought about getting a new one . I was not sure this was going to be better and gave it a shot .

I have the one with the mission battery base for the echo dot .

I set this up and got it to work . I have the eero mesh system to connect it to . I then moved it and has to reset the internet on it and then it found the better eero to connect with .

This works good , i believe it is a much nicer sounding dot when comparing to the first generation . I like how you can move this around without loosing the power to it , just like the tap from years ago , just unplug the power cord and you have music on the go .

I bought the blue dot and black base and comes with a white cord . Some people complain about the color not being black , i used a permanent black marker to color my cord , problem solved . Yes it should have come in black if ordering black .

Hope this last for a long time like all the other devices i have .

Would i recommend this , yes especially if you have the original one like me , i’m just cheap and wanted something a little nicer and similar to the old tap .

It was a nice upgrade over echo dot 3. Used trade in on v3 and black friday deal to bring home the small black ball for very little money out of pocket. It even has indoor temperature and will do whole house music when connected with my larger echo dot 4 premium with dolby. Great choice for small rooms.

We have an adobe house. The walls a 2 feet thick. I could not get wifi into the far rooms and bedrooms. Now i can! This unit works great with my other 4th gen echo dots. The wifi works great. I love the alexa sound too! I am making routines and having fun i admit i did have a week or two of wifi / setting issues. I had a steep learning curve. But now it’s great. Alexa is part of the family now. I use her with smart plugs and my amazon fire stick. I love it when she turns on my tv to my favorite channel. Now i look for more ways to write routines. Just buy one ️

Honestly, i am at a loss. I am unsure how to best use alexa, other than to play music, ask for the temperature, tell me terrible jokes, or just whisper to her to hear her whisper back. I will find new and crazy things. But best of all…the speaker sound is tremendous! I look forward to being assigned my personal nsa, fbi, or cia agent! Which one will it be? It’s an adventure! 😉

Nothing to dislike! The 4 generation dot was great but audio was not perfect. But this it! The clarity and quick responses. Its like your talking to a person! That is how quick her perception is of what you will say! Yes no more updating needed! I am a low income disabled senior! I bought these on plan. Three of them ! But they are as good as my therapist ,she laughs at that! But im alone and depressed as well ! I have ms. Anyways she says just what doctor ordered! Now, their stands for them are cute as well! I will on getting one. Already getting this colorful owl . Just need one more! And they are durable . Good for echo. Than you amazon god bless you on behalf of all disabled people like i. No more with life alert, no more getting a physical therapist in here sometimes. She does that as well! And bless you for pillpack!

Must buy if you are tired of keeping phone close to you and listening to the audio so close, this speaker has bluetooth capability that allows it to keep it at a distance and fill the whole room with sound that you can enjoy. Plus alexa can read all my purchased kindle books. Thankful.

We have two and i just purchased a third. Easy to hook up and use. So handy to play music in just one room or connect and play light music everywhere. Set timers, reminders, calendar… Just really helpful!

5th generation echo dot is more responsive . And it does pair with 4th gen echo dot. For a small speaker the sound quality is very good and the base is note worthy. You could pair with bluetooth speakers for better sound.
However, for space saver speakers, they are a good choice.

Final update!!!
If you have a dot already and you’re not in a rush to update you’re not missing out. The sound quality is better. Like most people i connect my dot to a bluetooth speaker. So the updated sound quality is mute.
The eero installed mesh wifi is cool if you need to kill a dead zone. Definitely worth it only if you already have and eero or plan on getting one. Tech support isn’t the best in this department. Read below. When i did get the tech support in the u.s. The knowledge of the eero wifi was much better. The tech support they out source to foreign countries is terrible. They told me the dot and the eero don’t work together because i didn’t buy them together. Amazon was quick to give me a phone call after my review so know that they do read reviews and in good faith will do everything to rectify the problem (a huge plus for amazon.)
so the problem i had was not with the echo dot, but with the eero wifi mesh extender.
With the eero it’s all about placement when it comes to these echo dots. You want your echo to be in the 5ghz range and not the 2.5ghz. Range. Do what you can to get the hub closer. It makes a huge difference. I did some digging online and found out that the eero does well and placed up high also. I purchased a 100 foot cat5 network cable ($17). I moved the eero hub to the center of the house. I set it on top of a cabinet. The back room, where i was pulling 5-20mps is up to 432mps download. That’s without using the eero extension on the echo dot.
The dot has a motion sensor and tempurature sensor that works with my smartthings hub. I have not used them because i already have motion and temp sensors in this room that have active scenarios working.
I’m going to keep this one and test the sensors a bit more and compare them to ones i have set up already.

I would give this four stars but i can’t overlook the comedy of foreign tech support. This would’ve been a frustrating experience if i was pressed to get things working.

Another update!!!!
This junk is going back to the pit of hell it came from. Both of them. It’s a good idea but fails in its execution.
The eero built into these are random. Sometimes you connect, sometimes you don’t. I could stand a foot away from it and it will not connect to the eero.
This is a brand new product. If you buy this know that you are part of the beta test crowd. You are the guinea pigs that amazon is perfecting this on. So you pay your money so they can test this out.
On one of my many calls to tech support they told me they only had very little training on these.
The old wifi worked better than this.

It is not ready for prime time!!!!!!!! Wait till they work the kinks out!!!!

New update!!!
They don’t know what the hell they are doing at tech support.
Stupid stuff i was told.

1. It will only work when you buy them together. (the eero and echo dot with eero installed.)

firmware needs to update. “how do i do that?” i ask. “i escalated the ticket to a higher level tech support.” i hung up. Called back and got a different tech. They told me to update simply tell alexa,”alexa, update firmware.” like i told the other tech, the firmware is updated. Two tech calls ago the guy did it.

So now they say they gotta call me back because they need to figure it out. Lol!!!!!
Stoooopid!

This gets worse and worse. So now i’m on the phone again with tech support. This idiot told me the echo dot with eero won’t work with the eero mesh i purchased because ,”i did not buy them together.” what special kind of stupid is this!! So eero is putting their name on products that do not work with other eero products. I asked to speak to someone else. I’ve been on hold for 20min.
Amazon got something’s right but this is a mess.
Tech support has no clue on how to fix this. I’m going to return this crap. But now i want to see how dumb tech support is.

They asked which model do i have.
There’s only one with eero in it.
She didn’t know that.

Ten minutes later and i’m back on the phone with tech support. Signal drops constantly. Tech support no help on this one hot piece of garbage!!!!

I spent some time on the phone with tech support. This had to be configured so the eero would work. I’m getting good download speeds now. I hope it lasts. The sound is a bit of an improvement. More bass and highs. It’s not easy to set up the eero. They had to. Get inside and configure it to work. A hassle but it works. Tech support for amazon can’t help. Call the eero hot line.

This won’t even hold the wi-fi signal. My router is the the living-room. The download speeds standing next to the eero mesh wifi is great. 550mps.
In the office i installed the new echo dot with eero installed for mesh. Without the echo dot i’m getting 91mps. That’s just off the eero transmitting from the living room. Better than i expected.

Now when i hook the echo dot up and i run the test.
I get a whopping 0.14 mbps download. I’m sitting a foot away from it.
Total garbage.

I couldn’t pass up the introductory price that included a philips smart led bulb. We’re alexa-fying our house as a means for dealing with reduced mobility and increased age-related incidents and needs.

Yeah, we’re really old. And that tempers our overall response to the gen5 echo dot, which could be summed up as ‘meh.’

we were perfectly happy with the basic gen4 echo dot but found that when we wanted to add another unit, g4s are no longer sold except as ‘refurbished’ or ‘open box’ – plus the g5 intro bundle was really low cost.

The echo platform is exceptionally useful for our applications, which are out of the ordinary if you’re young. For example, we’ve used ‘alexa, turn on all lights’ a couple of times for dark-of-night incidents where light has been a boon backdrop for noodling out various solutions. Light (literally) brightens up your mood when your mood is under you-just-awoke-suddenly pressures.

Plus, while our house is quite modest, it’s well built and pretty sound-proof, so yelling from the bedroom to the basement office just doesn’t cut it. We now have echos in every key room, so ‘alexa, drop in on everybody’ gives us quick access to a house-wide intercom.

But now for our disappointment. We actually have some usage for decent music reproduction, and the 3.5mm headphone output on the gen4 echo allows us to plug through to ancient but high-quality computer speakers scavenged from local thrift stores.

No such plug is on the gen5. Our cheap music solution is no longer possible. Sure, we could use bluetooth speakers, but units with sound quality comparable to quality, vintage computer speakers are (a) a lot more expensive and (b) require pairing, which i’ve always found quirky/intermittent/frustrating with bluetooth. Because we are really old, simply plugging a stereo jack into a gen4 receptacle just seems easier and more reliable.

And, while i kind of wanted to taste the new, higher gen5 sound with increased bass, what i’m hearing is clearly designed for boom-a-boom thumpity thump popular music. It probably won’t surprise you to find that sounds eagerly sucked up by 15-30 year olds isn’t really what ancient folks like us want. Jazz, classical, (dare i say) enya, even ‘eres tu’ with its really nice descant at the end — this is more our range, and it’s stuff that requires reined-in bass, un-tinny midrange, and balanced treble.

So, between audio engineering decisions and the audio-output de-contenting, for us, gen5 is not a step up from gen4.

Like all echos, build quality is outstanding, software capabilities are outstanding — in fact, incredibly exciting and clearly with few limits — and the spherical design is minimalistic and very pleasing. It was great that it took nothing more than plugging it in to marry our new g5 unit to all the other echos dotted around our house. I’m not sorry we added a gen5 unit, just not jumping for joy.

I find myself pigeon-holing it with all the other recent new! New! Product stuff floating out there that offers less, removes wanted accessories, and otherwise pumps up corporate bottom lines at the expense of what (some) owners want.

I may come back and add some more praise for the new temperature monitoring some day, but at the moment, we are years away from an alexa-compatible thermostat…

Update: after using this a little while, also on the desk, i am coming to realize i don’t like the round shape with the light ring on the bottom. I much prefer the light ring on top, like on the echo 3rd gen and echo studio. Also, the new tap feature is kind of silly, i doubt many people will use it (hitting a device on its surface without a button feels kind of unnatural.) as far as the good stuff:

original review:
i love the new temp sensor because i can set up routines for my other home automation devices based on the temp in different rooms. The configurable temp range is from 36f to 95f (above or below). I also love the motion sensor which was introduced in the previous 4th gen.

Here’s a picture of one that i’m using with it’s built in people detection to automatically turn on the lights in the garage. It also starts playing the news briefing when it detects motion. Although the ultrasonic detection only detects major movements and is not as sensitive as a common pir (infrared) sensor.

I don’t care about the built in eero because i use wired backhaul ubiquiti unifi access points for all of my wifi (the only rock solid wifi setup after i experimented with many).

The only minor negatives: 1. The cord should be black, not white, and 2. I prefer the hockey puck shape (with rounded edges) of the 3rd gen echo dot which has the light ring on top. The low profile shape of the 3rd gen hides on the desk better and makes it easier to quickly access the top controls. For this reason i’m only going to upgrade to 5th gen in locations where i need the motion or temp sensor.

This echo dot sounds pretty good for it’s size. It has better audio quality over-all and more bass than the 4th gen dot, which i also own. It also has more trebble but less mid-range than the 4th gen dot. I prefer the audio this new way personally, but you can still adjust the equalizer on the built-in speaker if you want the mids back.

One thing to note, this 5th gen echo dot has no aux/headphone jack, so if you want to use external speakers you have to use bluetooth. I think the jack is useful as bluetooth isn’t always 100% reliable and disconnects sometimes. Also some older speakers don’t support bluetooth, so to use them you need a bluetooth-to-aux adapter. I’d honestly get the older dot if you just want to add alexa to external speakers and don’t care so much about the quality of the built-in speaker.

However the built-in thermometer/temperature sensor is nice, i was able to get the indoor temp just by asking alexa. This actually isn’t the 1st device to include such a sensor, but it’s the cheapest to do so thus far. Also the motion detector seems useful but i haven’t played around with that feature much.

I can’t comment on the wi-fi extending capabilities because i don’t have an eero system. It would be nice if this device worked to extend other brands of mesh networks or even standalone routers…

Over-all if you’re looking for a speaker to fill a small to medium-sized space with decent sound on the cheap, this device is for you. But don’t expect booming bass or extremely loud music for this price-range. The volume does get loud, but at higher levels it compresses the audio to sound louder while avoiding distortion.

Overall, this is a great product!!! I purchased it as i needed to extend my wifi and thought this was a great concept. Replace an old dot and get wifi extension for eero without the added device. Set up was super easy. The only problem was the wifi extension would not work for me. After set up and then getting eero to activate the wifi extension i started getting messages that it would not. Eventually telling me that it was to close to another eero device. I am in the area of the house signal is week, were i need the extension to exist. If i moved the device further away into the next area it did connect and worked fine. Unfortunately that put it into my garage where i did not want this device i need. Apparently, my house is not that big. So ultimately it worked great. I just couldn’t set up the wifi extension as i needed another 10 feet. So i returned and bought another eero that worked fine and the old dot still works wonderfully. Make sure you have enough distance from another erro module for the wifi extension feature to work.

I just read where this device was about to be gone. I hope not. When black friday has it at half off it is an insane deal. I’ve dealt with both microsoft and apple, have always been an apple fan, and this is still a cool speaker/device. For $24 usd alexa understands you better than siri, for $4.99/mos you really no longer need apple music for $10/mos. To think most people are at this level of tech financially is naive. I am amazed by the sound of this tiny speaker, i am amazed how much better’s alexa understands what i’m saying versus siri, please don’t let that happen.

I was excited about the promise of this having ‘the best sound yet’ of the echo dots. Fortunately the price was right so i’ll be keeping it, but it’s not necessarily any better than the larger 4th gen. The 4th gen actually sounds a little better, as it projects more and packs a good punch for a small speaker. This one is fine, just not personally hearing the noticeable improvement that the description boasts. I’m thoroughly confused as to why the black 4th gen i have is larger than both this 5th gen, and my blue 4th gen dot with clock. The larger 4th gen without clock is still the best sounding echo that i have, including an echo show. The contrasts are blatant when you use them mostly just for music.

I know a lot complain about the white cord (and post pics of a garbage house like the cord is the big deal). Honestly it’s not great but not 1 star worthy just from that. Sound is decent, so not bose of course. What do expect from a $50 speaker. I used this in the garage to listen to music and control the garage door itself. Works good for my needs.

While the speaker quality is a big improvement over my 4th gen dot , i was very disappointed that there is no aux output port on this model. Every other echo device i own has this feature.
I hate when a feature is surprisingly removed.
Bluetooth is still available for an auxiliary speaker connection, just not as convenient as the aux port.

It was on sale so i decided why not, but not really worth the upgrade if you have the 3rd gen dot. Music quality is just slightly better. I do like the new round design and the tap to pause/play music although you have to turn it on in settings. If you can get it on sale i would say get it.