12 Best Amazon Echo and Alexa Speakers (2023): Earbuds, Soundbars, Displays

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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 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: Best Smart Speakers, Best Smart Displays, and Best Bluetooth Speakers. We also have guides on setting up your Echo speaker, creating Alexa routines, and Alexa skills that are actually fun and useful to help you get started.

Updated June 2023: We’ve updated pricing throughout this buying guide.

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Photograph: Amazon
Best Overall
Amazon 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 new Echo comes with Amazon's AZI Neural Edge processor too, which helps Alexa 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. It's worth noting that since Amazon launched a fifth-gen Echo Dot in 2022, there's a chance we'll see a fifth-gen Echo this year, but with layoffs to the Alexa department, there’s no guarantee.
Photograph: Amazon
Best for the Bedroom
Amazon Echo Dot With Clock (5th Gen)
I've had an Echo Dot with Clock on my bedside table for years, and it's the best alarm clock ever. You can easily check the time in the middle of the night, thanks to the forward-facing digital clock, and it wakes me up with my favorite seasonal playlists. I have it tell me the weather as I'm getting dressed too. It's also great in the kitchen, where the display can show the status of a timer.
The fifth-gen Dot is the latest and comes in two models—one with a clock and one without. It looks similar and round, like the standard Echo (our top pick), which means the Dot projects audio even further. However, you'll probably need a bigger speaker if you want to enjoy anything other than background music while you dress or cook.
Photograph: Amazon
Best for Kids
Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition (5th Gen)
This special edition of the Echo Dot is nearly identical to the fifth-gen Dot above, but it has easy-to-use parental controls that allow you to set time limits, filter explicit content, and review activity. The owl- or dragon-colored sphere comes with a year of Amazon Kids+, which includes thousands of Audible books and other special games and features. After that, you'll be charged $3 per month. Alexa can help your kids spell, play their favorite music, or—via another speaker in your house—remind them of dinner time. Echo also has the new Show 5 Kids, a smart display with parental controls, but we have yet to test it.
Photograph: Sonos
The Best Non-Amazon Speaker
Sonos Era 100
If your budget can stretch and you want something that does a bit more than Amazon's own offerings, Sonos' latest smart speaker (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is the best you'll find. Our favorite smart speaker now comes with dual tweeters for stereo, has better mics than some of Amazon's leading speakers, and can be used with virtually any streaming service (and even Google Assistant, if you prefer it).
You should also consider the new Sonos Era 300 (9/10, WIRED Recommends), which can function as an Alexa speaker. It supports spatial audio, but it's much larger and more expensive.