• 

  Amazon Echo Pop

  Best on a budget

  The Amazon Echo Pop comes in three eye-catching colourways and has a semi-spherical design. It's the cheapest option in the current lineup, and an affordable way to get Alexa in your home.

  Pros

  • More color options
  • Lower price

  Cons

  • Fewer sensors onboard
  • Sound not great

  $40 at Amazon $40 at Best Buy $40 at Target

• 

  Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)

  Best for smart homes

  The Amazon Echo Dot is one of the most popular smart speakers in the world. It offers great sound quality, excellent smart home integration and brilliant voice recognition. If you've got a lot of smart devices, this is the way to go.

  Pros

  • Temperature sensor and tap controls
  • Easy access mic mute button
  • eero Wi-Fi built-in

  Cons

  • More expensive

  $50 at Amazon $50 at Best Buy $50 at Target

Key Takeaways

• The Echo Pop is a more budget-friendly alternative to the Echo Dot, with an attractive design and multiple color options.
• The Echo Dot offers a richer and more room-filling sound compared to the Echo Pop.
• The Echo Dot has additional features like a temperature sensor, accelerometer, and Zigbee hub, making it a more versatile choice for smart home connectivity.

The Echo Dot has long been one of Amazon's most popular smart speakers. It's easy to see why, too. It's one of the most affordable and compact options in the Alexa smart speaker lineup, making it perfect for bedrooms, offices, hallways, and any other smaller space in your home. It also offers decent sound for a small speaker.

The Echo Dot was always the best choice for a low-cost Alexa device. That is until the Echo Pop was announced. The newer speaker is even cheaper, has an attractive design, is available in multiple colorways, and offers many of the same features as the Echo Dot in an even smaller package.

The question is, how does the Echo Dot compare to the 5th-generation Echo Dot and which one is right for your needs? We've tested and reviewed both devices, and this is how they compare.

Specs, pricing, and availability

The Amazon Echo Dot, now in its fifth iteration, was a puck-shaped device for many years, before moving to a spherical design in 2020. The latest version was released in 2022 and currently retails for $49.99.

The Echo Pop was released in May 2023, and it's available for $39.99. If you want to add some style to your Pop, you can buy silicon sleeves for an additional $16.99.

Both speakers are regularly discounted at Amazon, especially during sales events, which means that you can get them even cheaper at certain times of the year. Keep an eye on our deals' coverage to score the best prices.

• 	Amazon Echo Pop	Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)
  Dimensions	99 x 83 x 91mm, 196g	100 x 100 x 89mm, 340g
  Woofer Size	1.95in	1.73in
  Connectivity	Dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Matter
  Colors	Charcoal, Glacier White, Lavender Bloom, Midnight Teal	Charcoal, Glacier White, Deep Sea Blue

Design

Sphere vs semi-sphere

The design differences between the Echo Dot and Echo Pop are quite plain to see. The Echo Dot has a spherical shape, whereas the Echo Pop has a flat front, creating what Amazon calls a semi-sphere design.

Both devices have LED illumination to signal when they're in use and they both work in the same way, but the location is different on each model. The Echo Dot has an illuminated ring around its base, whereas the Echo Pop has a small illuminated section at the top.

The Echo Dot is available in Charcoal, Glacier White, and Deep Sea Blue color options. They're all quite subtle, whereas the Echo Pop goes for a slightly louder approach.

The Echo Pop can be purchased in Lavender Bloom and Midnight Teal options, as well as classic grey and white versions. But, if you want to liven things up further, you can purchase silicone sleeves in Blue, Red, Orange, Grey, Lilac, Purple, and even Glow in the Dark. The Echo Pop's more interesting array of colors and sleeves make it a great gift, especially for younger members of the family.

Both devices can be triggered using the Alexa wake word, and both have buttons to increase or decrease the volume and mute the microphone. However, the Amazon Echo Dot has one button the Pop doesn't have. The action button, otherwise known as the Echo button, allows you to quickly switch on setup mode, summon the voice assistant without the wake word, answer or reject incoming calls, and you can program it to control compatible smart home devices too.

Sound quality

Good sound for such small speakers

We have listened to both these speakers and the soundscape is quite different. The 5th generation Echo Dot has a 1.73-inch driver which creates a good amount of bass from its tiny chassis. It has a 360-degree design to project sound from all angles, and it's surprisingly robust in sound delivery, allowing flexible placement in a room.

Surprisingly, the Echo Pop has an even larger speaker inside, at 1.95 inches. But the Echo Pop is designed for small spaces, and that sound projects forward, so it's most suited to solo listening or limited spaces. It'll perform its best in a corner, tucked away on a shelf or bedside table.

Of the two, the Echo Dot offers richer, more room-filling sound, so if it's sound performance you're interested in, it's the Echo Dot that you want. The Echo Pop will be better off where listening demands are lower and won't be particularly suitable for entertaining.

Alexa and smart home connectivity

To Zigbee or not to Zigbee

Both devices house Amazon's AZ2 Neural Edge processor at their core. This means that they'll give you roughly the same Alexa experience, with speedy response times and reliable voice recognition. Features will be the same, too, since they both rely on Alexa's universal capabilities.

If you use an Eero mesh network at home, the good news is that both of these smart speakers can act as an extender, providing up to 1,000 square feet of additional coverage.

The difference comes in the form of the additional sensors. The Echo Dot has a temperature sensor built-in, as well as an accelerometer. This means it can be used to create temperature-based automation, or just used to report the temperature of a room. It can also be tapped to turn off an alarm, for example. Another useful feature of the Echo Dot is that it doubles up as a Zigbee hub to extend your smart home setup, meaning it can control Zigbee devices directly without the need for an additional Zigbee hub.

The Echo Pop, sadly, doesn't have any of these features. It is a simpler device overall, which is why it is a little bit cheaper and a lot smaller. You can still control smart home devices with your voice using the Echo Pop, and if you don't have Zigbee devices, or already own a Zigbee hub, then you won't miss the built-in Zigbee features of the Echo Dot.

Echo Pop vs Echo Dot: Which should you choose?

The Echo Pop is a great addition to the Amazon Echo lineup. We think it's one of the nicest-looking speakers from the brand so far, and the wealth of color options means that it's easy to match with your home decor and will make an excellent gift.

It's also the cheapest option, which is a big selling point in and of itself. But the sound isn't as wide or room-filling as the Echo Dot, so while it is convenient for adding Alexa to your room, it's not the best for listening to music.

If temperature-based automation and alarm clock usage are features that you want from your smart speaker, then you're likely best off with the Echo Dot: it also offers better sound performance, so if you want background music on a regular basis, then you'll be better off with the Echo Dot. Overall, the Echo Dot is a more well-rounded package, and it doesn't cost that much more than the Echo Pop.

No matter which device you choose, you're getting a lot for your money, and you can rest assured that you're not likely to find a better smart speaker for the price.