If you buy any smart speaker this Black Friday, make sure it's the $70 Echo
In just a few short years, smart speakers have gone from a weird niche to a household staple for a lot of people. Amazon has been at the forefront of this since 2014 when it debuted the original Amazon Echo, and over the years, it's continued to be the market leader.
The Echo (4th Gen) is the company's latest entry in its smart speaker lineup, and in honor of Black Friday, it can be yours for just $70 - a nice discount from its retail price of $100.
That's still a fair amount of money to pay when something like the Echo Dot can be bought for just $29 right now, but if you want one of the best Echos Amazon has ever created, this is a deal you absolutely cannot miss.
Best Echo yetAmazon Echo (4th Gen) | $30 off at Amazon
Amazon's released a lot of great smart speakers over the years, but the 4th generation Echo stands out as one of its best yet. It sounds amazing, features a sleek design, and is packed with tons of hardware features not found on competing speakers. At a new price of $70 during Black Friday, you can't afford to pass it up.
Amazon has gotten into a pattern of releasing new Echo hardware every year, and depending on who you are, that can make some releases feel less exciting than others. Following up on the good (yet boring) Echo 3rd Gen, the new 4th Gen model cranked things up to 11 in the best way possible.
It all starts with the design, which ditches the old cylinder shape in favor of a sphere. It's bold, eye-catching, and is available in four gorgeous colors -Charcoal, Glacier White, Twilight Blue, and a limited edition PRODUCT(RED). What I really love about the Echo is that it offers this gorgeous aesthetic without skimping out on features. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack for line in/out audio, a 1/4" thread mount for putting it on a speaker stand, and it doubles as a Zigbee smart hub for other Zigbee devices (like Philips Hue light bulbs).
Then there's the Echo (4th Gen's) audio quality, which is downright incredible. As noted in my review of it:
No matter what I listen to on the Amazon Echo (4th Gen), I'm constantly impressed with how it handles all of my music. The Echo kicks out a ton of bass, but it never gets to the point where it sounds too muddy. You get a nice thump on the low end, but the mid and high end still sounds good to my ears.
As someone that used to have a $200 Sonos One as my office speaker, it's darn impressive just how comparable the Echo really is.
The 4th generation Echo is an easy recommendation at its full retail price of $100, meaning it's a downright steal being discounted to $70 for Black Friday. Between the great design, excellent audio, and endless power of Alexa, it's the smart speaker to buy this holiday season.