This Christmas, while you’re out and about buying all of those gifts for the special people in your life, don’t forget about stocking stuffers. Stocking stuffers are definitely one of the most over-looked things. Many buy gifts, only to find that they forgot to pick up some gifts to put in the stockings, or they end up buying gifts that are too big for a stocking. This made us come up with the idea to develop a list of items just for stocking and today, we have the Echo Dot, which would fit nicely inside a large stocking.
Not too long ago (a couple of years ago), we remember how hesitant people were when it came to Alexa – people were definitely interested from the very beginning. Alexa, for those of you that aren’t familiar, is the voice assistant (on the Echo) that is capable of helping you with almost everything, like the weather and it can even play music from Spotify by command.
Since Alexa was first introduced to the public, it has gained even more new skills and has learned to talk to smart home products as well. There’s also a drop-in function, which we find pretty cool, because it will allow you to talk to anyone by calling either their own Echo device or their smartphone.
What Makes the Amazon Echo Dot so Great?
The Amazon Echo Dot took what was great about the first gen Echo and put it all in a slim speaker. If you find the speaker too small, that isn’t a problem, because you can easily connect an external speaker to it. To us, we feel the hardware looks a bit like Chromecast Audio, which is a good thing. We also noticed that there are quite a few voice-activated smarts, which make the product even better.
Not only is the body of the Echo Dot smaller, the price tag is also smaller (take a look at that on Amazon so you can see just how affordable it is). With the reduced price tag. It will be easier to bring Alexa in your home so that your family members can enjoy it.
To us, the most noticeable difference between the Echo and the Dot would be the height. It is 20cm shorter than the first version. With a size this small, you can easily put it in any nook or cranny you prefer, but we recommend putting it in the open where it is able to hear you from every angle.
Design
The Echo Dot is a nice looking product. It’s a lot like the original Echo, but it doesn’t have a volume ring. Instead, it has two buttons on the top in order to control the volume direction. There’s also mute and listen buttons.
Looking at the Dot, we find that it has the same light ring on it that the echo has – when the light ring is lit up, this means that Alexa is listening to you.
The Dot has seven microphones, which makes it so that it can hear you, regardless of where you’re standing in the room.
Conclusion
For those of you that are stuck and trying to find a good stocking stuffer that would be useful, we recommend the Echo Dot.
