Echo Dot (4th Gen, 2020 release) | Smart speaker with Alexa | Charcoal
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Device is great, but beware... the black ones come with a white cable... unlike the previous model. No idea why they did this.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "I have a few Dots around the house. One decided to have an attitude and she had to be replaced. Problem with voice recognition. I still pay the bills around here so she is not here any more!! HaHa!! I replaced her with the new Echo Dot 4th Gen in Blue. How pretty! It matches my home furnishings. Love the ball design. Very different but really kool. Sound is beautiful. I love playing music and the tone is great. I'll update if I run into a problem but so far I'm really pleased with this new design, color and sound. Highly recommend."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Much smaller than expected but the sound is phenomenal. I have almost every single version of the Echo and Echo dot in my house for an easy to use Spotify music setup to surround my upstairs with music but this little orb is the best sounding of the lot. Highly recommended and a great improve over the Dot. I hope that Amazon keeps this style for a while.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' I’m loving the full sound, a great upgrade. What I don’t like is the white cord, why not black? Not sure 🤔 who made the decision for the cord to be white. For a little tech toy the sound is really nice for the price. I love the new design, why not add a digital clock on the charcoal design was disappointing but not a huge one. Overall a great sound from a little toy, can’t wait for them to add the new feature that allow me to monitor issues when I’m away at work and alert me real time on my phone.....'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-3 review-rating', 'review_body': 'This new 4th Gen Echo Dot brings a new spherical shape to the Echo Dot lineup. It is about the same width as the previous Echo 3rd Gen, but since it is a ball now it is obviously a little taller. The blue light is now on the bottom. Here are my thought so far:\n\nTHE GOOD\n\n- Bottom ring light. The new blue light on the bottom actually illuminates the surface that the Dot is sitting on. This actually makes the light considerably more noticeable, especially if sitting on a semi-reflective surface.\n- Slightly better sound. The actual speaker hardware is the same as the 3rd Gen Dot, but this one sounds slightly better to my ear. This could be because the speaker is pointed toward the front, instead of pointing straight up like it was in the previous model.\n\nTHE BAD\n\n- Aesthetics. This is personal opinion of course, but I think I prefer the smaller, less noticeable "hockey puck" shape of the previous models. This one is closer to a softball, and stands out much more. Sure it might be better for creating sound, but I don\'t use Dots for music listening anyway. If I wanted to do that I would use a regular Echo or Echo Studio, which of course sound much better than this Dot. The whole point of the Dot for me was to use it in locations where I wanted a small device that doesn\'t take up much space.\n- Price. The old Gen 3 Dot is now $10 cheaper than this version, and it is really hard for me to justify choosing this Gen 4. It really seems like you are just paying for the new shape and very slightly better sound, but that doesn\'t currently seem worth it to me. There just aren\'t enough improvements from what I\'ve seen so far.\n\nAll in all, this new Gen 4 Dot might be worth it for you if you really dig the ball shape and bottom ring light, but otherwise I\'d have to recommend sticking with the Gen 3 for $10 less.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I purchased this as i always do with the latest and greatest echo devices. This was a sour Disappointment for someone who is used to amazon improving on their devices yearly.\n\nComplaints:\n1. They shipped my Black echo, with a WHITE cord, In the past the cord color matched the device, why change?\n2. The charger is Noticeably larger and cheaper looking, sporting rounded corners and a bulky design.\n3. The sound quality vs my 2nd Gen Dot has actually gotten worse. This speaker lacks bass and is very "hollow" sounding. The gen 2 speaker blows the gen 3 out of the water, IMO they majorly cheaped out to get you other features like an Ai core and a bulkier bigger device, in bigger packaging, requiring more shiping cost, a poor trade off for quality.\n4. Its fabric mesh, and construction seem cheaper than previous generations, it is significantly lighter than a previous gen (my guess is a small speaker magnet and more airspace due to its odd shape)\n5. Its small, i thought the ball was cool, big and substantially, Like a speaker should be, but its tennis ball sized and looks like a childs toy, or a cheap bluetooth speaker you got for $5.....\n6. It has this awful "sheen" to the plastic that makes it look like some Chinese garbage product....\n7. The buttons feel awful and cheap compared to previous generations.\n\nPros:\nIt has underglow now.\n\nOverall its clear this product was rushed, or had a strict budget in which a lot of its features, and quality were stripped. The gen2 dots are amazing, and if you weren;t going to make them better, why release a gen 3?\n\nIt costs more, its much much worse in basically every category, and in my opinion, is a complete fail. Its supreme selling a brick because you want it. Buy a gen2, you\'ll be happier'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "This is the the fifth dot I've purchased, but the first 4th gen. (4 3rd gen's and 2 Toshiba Fire TVs). Setup was easy, so no news there but the sound quality is better than on the 3rd gens. Also, it hears better. The improved aesthetics are an eye-catcher that draw questions, comments and compliments. I have yet to set up my smart home so I can't speak to it's smart home functionality, but as with everything Amazon I'm looking forward to that integration. If you're looking to jump into the smart assistant/Alexa world or looking to upgrade from previous generations then this is a good device though there are now plenty of 3rd gens, both new and pre-owned that are more reasonable. Still, this is a great device that I highly recommend. We use it, and all our other Dots all day long for announcing, news, music, drop-in, calendar and timer notifications, shopping among other features. In closing, five-stars! :-)"}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "This is one of the most infuriating purchases I have made. I recently bought a echo dot 3rd generation on prime day special but couldn't help wonder if the sound quality was different. The 4th generation device's sound is much better. It is a clear and less muffled. Which is great if I didn't need to connect it to anything or what to use any Alexa features. I've spent 4 hours going through every troubleshoot information I can find and no matter what this thing will not connect to my mobile hotspot wifi. I had some similar issues with the 3rd generation but it just took a few extra tries. I even tried to get assistance and they sent me the instructions already included then switched me over to someone else who wanted to start me over again with the same basic help links.\n\nThis is infuriating because not only does this item not work as its supposed to but I also returned my functional 3rd generation which is now double the price and unavailable."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': ' Watch my attached video comparing echo dot 4 with echo dot 3. Amazon has really went cheap on quality this time. The product feels very cheap and very inferior sound quality compared to the echo dot 3. Also the fact of providing white AC adapter to a black speaker is cheap and ugly by itself.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-3 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Play Video\n I own echo dot gen 3and I was VERY excited to try gen 4. However, it is quite disappointing, the voice recognition is ok. But the sound quality is horrendous, even Alexa sounds different. I will keep it because I can’t wait until 2021 to get another gen 3. Also it feels cheaper than gen 3 so... if you can get gen 3 instead of 4, do it.'}]