Amazon's unveiled its new design language for the Echo speaker line, including both the Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock, it's announced as part of its hardware presentation, giving them both a radical new look.

Gone are the puck-shaped speakers that have become so wildly popular, replaced by a spherical design that, at first glance, looks a good deal chunkier than the previous generation of Dot speakers.

Amazon brings new design and chip to the Echo Dot and Dot with Clock photo 2
Amazon

It's a pretty significant change, and also brings with it some improvements to the speed and accuracy of Alexa's responses, as a result of the new AZ1 Neural Edge chip that Amazon's putting in all of its fresh hardware.

The speaker still has that trademark blue light strip at the bottom of its body, to give you status indicators for Alexa, and let you know when you're being listened to. 

Amazon Echo Dot (2020)

Amazon

Amazon Echo Dot w/ clock (2020)

Amazon

Amazon brings new design and chip to the Echo Dot and Dot with Clock photo 1

Amazon also threw a spotlight on the new Kids Edition of the Echo Dot, which have fun and friendly new designs to make sure that they don't look out of place in a young person's room. Plus, new features around kids' voice accounts mean that Alexa will be more useful than ever before when a kid's using it. This was shown off with a nice demo of Alexa helping a kid with their reading homework, which sounds useful for busy parents. 

All of the Dot models will launch later this year but can be pre-ordered now -Echo Dot for $49.99, and Echo Dot with clock for $59.99.

Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition - Panda (2020)

Amazon