After years in a slumbering hiatus, the Amazon Echo Spot is back to fight for the title of best alarm clock. In my case, however, it’s challenging my iPhone for a spot on the table within arm’s reach of my bed. For the last decade or so, my phone has acted as the central nervous system for my good night’s sleep, and I bet I’m not alone. Using your phone for alarms, sleep timers and even a clock became normalized, especially for iPhone owners out there with MagSafe charging stands for StandBy Mode.
But I’d also wager that you’re also trying to extricate your phone from the final hours before bed. Something about all the brain stimulation that comes from doomscrolling doesn’t help, and I’ve wanted to go back to a simple alarm clock. Except, well, none of the truly basic ones ever made sense — they were too limited, and I wanted something that could play the song(s) of my choice. And this is why I was excited to see if the new Amazon Echo Spot is a good alarm clock alternative to my phone.
Trying to declutter your bedtime routine? This smart alarm clock will help you avoid distractions at night and wake you gently in the morning.
What we liked about it
The Echo Spot’s sound quality is pretty good for its price
You’re probably thinking about getting the Amazon Echo Spot over a traditional alarm clock because you’re also getting an Alexa speaker built right in. And while I’m not big on the smart home, I have enjoyed my time using the Echo Spot as a smart speaker. For example, the bass of Charli XCX’s “Sympathy Is a Knife” throbs surprisingly hard considering the size of the Amazon Echo Spot. Oh, and if you’re big on the smart home, know that the Echo Spot can control compatible devices such as lighting and works with custom routines for starting your morning off right.
Softer tunes, such as Jung Jae-il’s score for the film “Parasite,” also sound surprisingly good on this small orb. As for what I wake up to in the morning? The Amazon Echo Spot does a fine job kicking out the tunes with LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends.”
And then there are the actual built-in alarm tones. The default “simple” alarm will do the trick, but I’m more a fan of the calming Aurora, which provides a gentle wake-up into the morning. The fact that you get decent sound in a good design that’s often on sale for $55 (and normally $80) certainly makes the Echo Spot a compelling proposition.
For those who want alarms that I’d classify as goofy (and not fit for the morning rise), there are also tones from popular properties such as “Hotel Transylvania,” the musician Blake Shelton, the Man City Football club, the bizarre ‘“Sharknado” films and even “Harry Potter.” They’re there, and I don’t have much to say about them beyond “you couldn’t pay me to wake up to them.”
A nice design with a sneaky little surprise
Minimalism is a good thing when it comes to the Echo Spot. Available in the white model I tested as well as black and blue designs that I think look nicer, this sliced-up sphere doesn’t take up a whole lot of space on my bedside countertop. I also like how its volume and privacy buttons are basically hidden on the top side for a cleaner front face.
Oh, and if you — like me — are worried about owning yet another device and contributing to the overall mess of techy clutter, there is a little bit of good sustainability news: Amazon’s making the Echo Spot from 36% recycled materials, and its plastic is 58% postconsumer recycled plastic.
The only real frustration I have with the design is that there’s a thick black bezel surrounding the screen that you might mistake for an extension of the display. You might not notice it at first glance, but it’s something I caught when I slept alongside the Echo Spot at night.
Easy to set and change alarms and sleep timers
I’m not a huge fan of talking aloud to tech, but the ease with which I set an alarm on the Amazon Echo Spot may be changing that. It recognizes the nuance of repeating alarms when I say “every weekday,” and it picks up specific song titles when I ask for them.
Oh, and since the Echo Spot plays podcasts (more on that later), I’m happy to note that it also supports sleep timers. When I’m trying to wind down at night, I’ll often throw on a podcast voiced by calming hosts and set a 20-minute timer for it to stop playing.
A customizable alarm face that is thankfully light on ‘special features’
The Echo Spot packs six different clock faces made up of five digital options and one analog choice. Featuring animations when the next minute strikes and customizable colors (or “themes,” as the device calls them), these clock faces allow you to make the Amazon Echo Spot your own.
If you’re tired of looking up the local weather, opt for one of the two faces that feature an illustration of the current conditions in your area. Your choices either rotate the weather and the day’s date or give you a larger image to show the current conditions. If Amazon is reading, I’d love to see the temperature as well.
One thing I love about the Echo Spot is what’s not here: the unrelated content I never asked for that filled up my old Echo Show. I originally wanted to use my iPhone’s StandBy mode on the TwelveSouth HiRise 3 Deluxe because of how Amazon’s smart display got filled up with ads and other unrelated content that made me want to chuck it out of the window. No such cruft here.
What we didn’t like about it
I wish the ‘stop alarm’ button were bigger
My only real advice for anyone setting up their new Amazon Echo Spot is to do a practice alarm before going to sleep. Why’s that? I’m not exactly fond of how you turn off your alarm once it’s activated.
The Echo Spot screen gives you two smallish fingerprint-sized buttons, and you might not realize which is which. Yes, I actually tapped “snooze” the first time, and felt like a real dummy. The turn-off-alarm button right beside it is easy enough to tap once you realize what you should have done.
Yes, a simple assistant command such as “Alexa, turn off the alarm” works, but I’d rather tap or click. And I’m sure everyone sharing the bed with someone else would love to avoid having a conversation that begins with “what did you say, honey?” when they’re clearing the sleep from their eyes.
Alexa is an imperfect search engine
While I prefer to only use my bedroom for sleeping, I’m well aware that some folks love to just stay there (or “rot,” if you prefer). And for my ambient audio background, I love to throw on podcasts. Unfortunately, I just had some trouble bringing up some of my favorite shows, including the morning I was trying to listen to the conspiracy theory-trawling “QAA Podcast.” Instead, asking the assistant for this podcast only got me a “Q&A” interview between Ben’s Chili Bowl owner Virginia Ali and Ben’s Chili Bowl official historian Bernard Demczuk from C-SPAN.
There are also the occasions where relying on speech-to-search isn’t great, like when I want to hear the latest episode of the “Analog(ue)” podcast. This isn’t a knock on the Echo Spot specifically, more just something to keep in mind. Additionally, Alexa doesn’t always use the right podcast app, as the latest episode of “Better Offline” loaded from Amazon Music and not Apple Podcasts, and I can’t tell why.
Annoyingly, though, pulling up specific episodes through Apple Podcasts doesn’t work, so I had to make do with the most recent episode. This wouldn’t be a problem if I could use the Echo Spot as a Bluetooth speaker, but as I mentioned, I’m trying to use my phone less at night. And I’ve already got some of the best portable speakers on hand for that.
Fortunately, you can manually jump to the part of a podcast you’re listening to using the Alexa app, which is also good for managing your alarms when you’re away from the Echo Spot.
The display just isn’t as good as I’m used to
This comes with a big “what did I expect?” caveat. Having used larger Echo Shows in the past, as well as my iPhone for my bedside listening device, I’ll admit I’m a little spoiled on screen quality.
That said, the small patch of the Echo Spot’s screen where album art is shown can feel a little limited for more detailed album covers such as images for Charly Bliss’ “Forever” and the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out.” But the Echo Spot costs $80 and was recently discounted to $55, so I shouldn’t expect it to be on par with a phone that costs almost 100 times as much.
Bottom line
In the search for a better alarm clock, the Amazon Echo Spot does enough right for helping me go to sleep and wake up that I’m willing to overlook where it could stand to be improved. Yes, the black bezel around its front screen is thicker than I’d like, and a bigger screen could have meant bigger buttons, but I’m already moving past those nitpicks.
Thanks to its customizable interface (I’ve gone with the green hue and larger weather graphic), surprisingly strong sound and ease of use, the Echo Spot has actually taken over my bedside table. I’m even tempted to get a black one for my bedroom and move this white model to my desk, as I do enjoy having the speaker at hand.