The Amazon Echo Dot is at its lowest price EVER for Black Friday

The Amazon Echo Dot 5th generation (2022) is available at its lowest price ever on Amazon. This Black Friday deal has dropped the price to just £22, down from the usual £45. It’s compact, it’s smart and it’s now on sale.

In our Amazon Echo Dot 5th generation review, we awarded it five stars and a Best Buy award. The 2022 model of the Echo Dot has an improved 1.73in speaker, enhancing audio quality, particularly in the bass department, and ensuring less distortion at louder volumes. Its design remains largely unchanged from its predecessor, maintaining the same dimensions but with a slight increase in weight, presumably due to the larger speaker. The familiar spherical shape, covered mostly in fabric, and the soft ring of blue light that activates with the wake word, continue to be attractive features of the design.

One significant upgrade is the addition of a temperature sensor, allowing for integration into smart home routines, like activating a thermostat or fan based on ambient temperature. However, some users may find this feature less practical. The Echo Dot is now also touch-sensitive, enabling users to pause music or silence alarms with a tap – a minor but potentially useful change.

Despite these improvements, the removal of the 3.5mm line in/out jack is a notable downside, limiting the Echo Dot to Bluetooth connectivity. This change detracts from the flexibility that previous models offered in terms of connecting to different audio sources and systems.

Performance-wise, the Echo Dot excels in its category. It delivers strong, full-bodied sound, suitable for smaller rooms or as an ancillary speaker. While Alexa’s smart capabilities may not match those of Google Assistant in some aspects, it still performs effectively for smart home commands and routines.

The Amazon Echo Dot 5th generation (2022) remains the best-value small smart speaker on the market, even more so now that it’s £23 cheaper. While the improvements are incremental and the loss of the 3.5mm jack is felt, its current Black Friday deal price is tempting.