Amazon's flagship Echo has more speakers than you can shake a stick at

Smart speakers can make a great addition to many homes, especially those with other smart devices like lights and plugs. While there are plenty of inexpensive, minimalist speakers that add lots of smarts to your home, they usually lack in the sound department. If you want a smart speaker that prioritizes sound quality, you’ve got to shell out more cash, so while the Amazon Echo Studio may seem like a big ask at $200, it’s in a different class than your average smart speaker.

So, while it may not be ideal for anyone who just wants things like reminders or the weather, anyone looking for a smart speaker that prioritizes sound quality as highly as voice assistant features will be drawn to the Echo Studio. The main focus may be music, but that doesn’t mean smart-home features are lacking. With inclusions like a Zigbee hub and Dolby Atmos, it’s clear the Echo Studio is designed to be the hub of your smart home just as much as it is your preferred method of streaming your music. The biggest weakness is Amazon’s Alexa, but it’s more of a minor annoyance than an Achilles heel.

The Echo Studio may not be a bang-for-the-buck device, like Amazon’s cheaper Echo offerings, but it’s clearly the one Amazon thinks of as its flagship. Between Dolby Atmos, a Zigbee hub, and the sheer number of speakers packed in here, the Echo Studio doesn’t have to be cheap to be worth the money.

There’s no way around this, the Echo Studio is big. If you’re coming from something more reasonably sized, like an Echo Dot or even a full-sized Echo, you’ll struggle to fit the Echo Studio into the same spaces you could comfortably tuck other smart speakers. There’s an excellent reason for that, though, and it’s because the Echo Studio is crammed to the gills with speakers. With a 5.25” woofer, a 1” front-firing tweeter, and 2” left, right, and top firing speakers, the studio has a lot of hardware to justify its size, as well as the heft that comes with it.

The exterior design is fairly minimal, with just 4 buttons. Left to right are the mute toggle, volume down, up, and the assistant wake button. That last one is handy if someone changed the wake word to Ziggy when you weren’t paying attention (yes, that’s actually an option), and your Quantum Leap knowledge is severely lacking. It’s easy to tell when the mic is disabled since both the light ring around the top of the Echo Studio and the button itself will be red.

Probably the most prominent physical features are the front and back woofer cutouts near the bottom. The other speaker grills are noticeable if you look closely, but are otherwise obscured by the fabric cover. Speaking of that fabric, your only color options for it are gray, and Billie Eilish. That’s not me being snarky and out of touch about a neon green or platinum blonde colorway, the only other option is literally a picture of Billie Eilish—see below. That difference will run you an extra $30, but there’s no other differences to speak of; it even has the same black plastic trim pieces.

If, for some reason, this appeals to you, Amazon will sell you one.

Around the back, just below the woofer cutout, you’ll find the only inputs. Left to right is a USB Micro B port that’s just for Amazon to use, the figure eight power inlet, and a combo optical/3.5mm jack. That’s a bit of a curveball, as far as audio inputs are concerned, but when your target demographic is stuffy audiophiles, supporting optical audio isn’t a terrible move. Don’t expect it to come with any of those input cables, though. The only things the Echo Studio comes packed with are a six-foot power cable, and the tote bag it’s packed in to make it easy to pull out of the box.

One of the big promises of the Echo Studio is room-filling sound, and that relies on understanding the acoustic properties of your room. Much like a professional setting up a surround system, the Echo Studio gets a profile of your room by producing a test sound and analyzing the reverberations. The Echo Studio has an array of seven mics for voice controls that pull double duty when you calibrate for a new room. This is also how it pulls off Dolby Atmos support, allowing it to project sound to make it seem like it’s coming from other locations. There aren’t a lot of Atmos tracks on Prime Music, but there’s enough to get a decent enough feel for it, and I was honestly surprised by how convincing it can be at times. Even sitting right in front of it at my desk, some tracks sounded like there was music coming from my left and right, and oddly enough some vocal parts sounded like they were coming from closer than the speaker.

On the whole, the Echo Studio has enjoyable sound quality, though it isn’t quite as good at lower volumes. While it’s impressive at higher volumes, with zero distortion or rattle from the woofer, it can sound very hollow at lower levels. I don’t believe this will be an issue if it’s in a living room, or anywhere else where it’ll have other noise to compete with, but in a quiet room where you’re likely to listen at low volumes, expect it to sound like a cheaper speaker. This is only an issue when it’s below about 20% volume, but it’s a very drastic change when you cross that threshold.

I already mentioned how impressed I was with the lack of distortion at higher volume levels, but I’m impressed just how loud it can be. I’ve seen the phrase “room-filling sound” thrown around a lot, but it’s very fitting in this case. While the Echo Studio is definitely large for a smart speaker, something this size should not be able to cover a room in sound as well as this does. If you absolutely have to squeeze more sound into a room, you can either add the Echo Sub into the mix, get a second Echo Studio to make it a stereo pair, or both.

The Echo Studio is marketed as a music-centric smart speaker, and the only way you’ll be able to take advantage of that is to play high-def and lossless tracks. The Studio supports plenty HD sources; in addition to Amazon’s own HD Music service, you get Deezer, Apple Music, and Tidal. It supports Spotify, too, but we’re still waiting for the launch of Spotify Hifi. While I’d like to see more services available, like Qobuz for example, the only big service that’s missing is YouTube Music. There are a few other options to choose from, but even with all the prominent (non-Google) players and a few extras thrown in for good measure, the selection still feels a bit limited. Unlike Google’s speakers, you can’t just “cast” whatever’s on your phone to the Echo Studio.

One of the weakest aspects of the Echo Studio is Alexa. Between Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant has been the weakest in my experience, but at least it’s still better than Bixby. The third-party skills marketplace gives it a bit of a leg up since it lets other developers give your Echo the ability to do things like call you an Uber or order you a pizza, but that doesn’t change Alexa itself. My main complaint is how specific and non-conversational your commands need to be. Commands as simple as “Turn off the lights” will prompt Alexa to ask you if you mean one specific light, meanwhile the Google Assistant knows I want to turn all the lights off. There are plenty of commands that will get you what you want in any given scenario, but it’s just not as intuitive as Assistant or Siri.

While Alexa itself is a bit wonky at times, setting up the Echo Studio through the Alexa App was a breeze. My phone connected to the Echo Studio right through the app, and then it only took a few seconds for it to hop over to my wifi. Setting up other smart devices is just as easy since the Echo Show doubles as a Zigbee hub. I happened to have an extra Zigbee-enabled Hue bulb in my closet, so I decided to add it through the Alexa app instead of the Philips Hue app. Unlike setting a new bulb up through my Hue hub, it immediately found it and let me add it to a room profile, cutting the process down from minutes to just seconds.

Maybe. It’s obviously not for everyone at $200, but it’s full of features that everyone wants in a smart speaker. If you want a good intersection of sound quality and price, this is a pretty appealing option, especially since it can easily be expanded piecemeal into a much more serious system by adding a second Echo Studio and an Echo Sub. If you care about having the absolute best audio, there are better options, though they cost significantly more.

Amazon has other Echo devices that work as a Zigbee hub, though all of them are a far cry from the Studio in terms of sound quality. If you aren’t a fan of Alexa, you might be better off checking out our other favorite smart speakers for one that has Google’s Assistant instead. But if you've been waiting for a Google Home Max 2, it might be time to switch to Alexa.

If you're caught up on Google's spat with Sonos, you'll be aware that even if you bought a stereo pair of Nest Audios, you can no longer cast to them as a group from the Google Home app. Amazon still has this functionality built in, so if you expand your smart speaker collection, you'll still easily manage simultaneous playback across however many Echos you want. As far as sound goes, while the Nest Audio is a fine device, the audio from the Echo Studio is in another class. While you can get a stereo pair of Nest Audio speakers for the same price, the Dolby Atmos built into the Studio helps to level the playing field, especially considering how limited the stereo functionality of the Nest speaker line is, thanks to the aforementioned legal trouble with Sonos.

The Sonos One has a very similar list of audio optimization features, and stereo pairing ease, but as far as speakers are concerned it only has a tweeter and woofer packed into its much smaller frame. In addition to this more compact size, it also clocks in at about half the weight, but that's not really a selling point for a device that you aren't supposed to move around after setup. Features the Sonos One has over the Echo Studio are an ethernet port, access to the Google Assistant, and touch controls that include track skipping. I wouldn't say that those are enough to justify a larger price tag, especially considering the massive difference in the size, number, and variety of speakers the Echo Studio has.

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Connor is 6'5", quite literally making him a massive nerd. His first Android was a Samsung Intercept he bought in 2010, and he's been a rabid Android fan ever since. When he's away from his keyboard, he's usually taking photos or working out. Reach me at c.nolan at androidpolice dot com