If you’ve a home stuffed with Amazon Echos, and also you’re searching for a sensible speaker that delivers larger constancy, the $200 Amazon Echo Studio is a no brainer. It could be a unbelievable speaker for the cash even when it didn’t have a digital assistant (Alexa) and a sensible house hub (Zigbee) onboard.
But what in the event you don’t have a home stuffed with Amazon Echos? If you’re out there for a high-fidelity good speaker, and also you’ve already settled on the Google Home ecosystem, keep it up and purchase the Google Home Max. Yes, it’s dearer, however its barely superior audio efficiency justifies the value bump.
But this evaluate is in regards to the Echo Studio, so let’s talk about its attributes. The function that units the Echo Studio other than not solely most good audio system however most powered audio system usually (soundbars excepted) is its help for 3D audio. Amazon achieves this in two methods: First, by means of the speaker’s {hardware} design (extra on that in a bit); and second, by means of its help for the object-based audio codecs Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio.
This evaluate is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best smart speakers, the place you’ll discover opinions of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it is best to think about when buying.
Amazon delivers the Echo Studio with the trimmings of a high-end machine, together with this material pouch that you simply’ll encounter on unboxing.
But earlier than you leap on the 3D bandwagon, bear in mind that the one technique to hear 3D audio with the Echo Studio immediately is with a subscription to Amazon Music HD, which prices $14.99 monthly ($12.99 monthly for Amazon Prime members). You’ll additionally need to know that the variety of tracks encoded in both 3D format is restricted. Amazon says it has “more than 50 million songs in High Definition (HD),” nevertheless it doesn’t disclose what number of tracks are encoded in 3D.
I can inform you that you simply’ll discover few total albums encoded this fashion—other than some current releases from main artists. The file labels have picked hit singles for remastering, however they’ve left lesser-known tracks untouched. That’s high-quality for most individuals—who can’t identify a Red Rider hit apart from “Lunatic Fringe,” for instance—however no band’s hardcore followers will probably be happy with what’s out there. Most of the albums I sampled had a mixture of 3D and stereo tracks. If you’re not a fan of Amazon Music, the Echo Studio can also be suitable with Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, SiriusXM, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. But it bears repeating that 3D music will not be out there on any of these companies right now.
If you like streaming music you own (that you simply’ve bought and downloaded, or ripped from CD and saved on a neighborhood server, for instance), the Echo Studio may also deal with all of the extra typical audio codecs you’d anticipate, together with AAC, FLAC, MP3, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, in addition to the much less widespread Opus and Vorbis. Amazon outfitted the Echo Studio with an onboard DAC (digital-to-analog converter) that may decode tracks with as much as 24-bit decision at sampling charges as excessive as 48kHz. The speaker has a dual-band Wi-Fi adapter onboard (2.4- and 5GHz), and it additionally helps Bluetooth—however not the aptX or aptX HD codecs that ship larger constancy by way of that wi-fi connection.
Michael Brown / IDGThe Amazon Echo Studio has fundamental controls on a hoop encircling its high (left to proper): Mic mute, quantity down, quantity up, and pause.
Echo Studio specs
The Echo Studio is outfitted with three 2.0-inch mid-range drivers (one firing left, one firing proper, and one firing straight up) and a 1.0-inch tweeter that fires straight on the listener. A 5.25-inch down-firing woofer handles the decrease frequencies, and is mounted instantly above a slotted bass aperture (the cupboard is in any other case sealed—the aperture will not be a bass reflex port). These audio system are pushed by Class D amplifiers delivering mixed peak energy of 330 watts. Amazon says the Echo Studio delivers a powerful frequency vary of 30Hz to 24kHz (no tolerance given).
The uncommon driver configuration is designed to bounce pontificate your room’s partitions and ceiling so that you simply’re enveloped in sound, versus having the music wash over you in waves. But your room’s configuration will, in fact, play a major position within the speaker’s potential to tug off this trick. If you’ve a wall on one facet of the speaker, however not the opposite, or when you’ve got a cathedral ceiling, the impact received’t be as compelling. I evaluated the speaker in my 250-square-foot house theater, which has wonderful acoustics, and I discovered the impact pleasant. When I moved the speaker into my bigger kitchen, the place the fitting and left partitions are 20 toes aside (versus 12 toes aside in my house theater), the 3D impact was a lot much less spectacular.
Michael Brown / IDGI additionally noticed that the floor you place the Echo Studio on has a major influence on its bass response. After beginning my listening take a look at on a conveyable wood desk, I relocated the speaker to a way more substantial built-in floor-to-ceiling leisure middle, and bass response elevated markedly as woofer-induced vibrations transferred from the underside of the speaker’s cupboard to the furnishings beneath it. Audio purists will look down their noses at this remark—you need to hear the speaker, not its enclosure or the floor it rests on—however I didn’t discover it overly objectionable. I like bass.
Echo Studio listening checks
That mentioned, listening to the opening measures of Adele’s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” from her album 25, the kick drum had extra the tenor of a tom-tom struck with a mallet than a correct bass drum. This was true whether or not I used to be streaming the observe from Amazon’s service or listening to the model I’d ripped from CD and encoded in FLAC. But that was the exception to the rule; and albeit, I had a lot the identical expertise with the Google Home Max on this observe. I had a really completely different expertise with Donald Fagen’s “Tomorrow’s Girls,” from the Steely Dan entrance man’s album Kamakiriad. The Echo Studio’s overemphasized bass trampled the combo, notably on the expense of Fagen’s vocals.
Most of the tracks encoded in 3D that I listened to sounded nice in my house theater, however much more bizarre within the less-optimal situations of my kitchen. The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm,” with its spooky thunderstorm sounds and Ray Manzarek’s jazz-infused keyboard work sounded magical with the 3D therapy, and the remastered 3D model of the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” made me smile. Then once more, how may it not?
Michael Brown / IDGThe 3.5mm aux enter on the Amazon Echo Studio can also be a Toslink (optical) enter.
Amazon’s quotation of a peak energy score of 330 watts apart, I discovered that the Echo Studio bought simply loud sufficient to fill my house theater with sound. There was by no means any likelihood of it driving me out of the room, however it could stand as much as a room stuffed with partiers. You may also pair two Echo Studios for stereo audio replica, and in order for you much more bass, you’ll be able to add Amazon’s Echo Sub to the equation.
Echo Studio as a sensible house hub
The Echo Studio has a built-in Zigbee good house hub, so it will probably instantly management good house units geared up with Zigbee radios—together with Philips Hue good bulbs (without having the $50 Philips Hue Bridge).
Zigbee is a high-quality good house protocol, and there are additionally an growing variety of good house merchandise—particularly good mild bulbs—that may be managed by way of Wi-Fi, eliminating the necessity for a correct hub altogether. But our high picks in good house hubs—together with Samsung SmartThings and Amazon’s Ring Alarm—help all three of the most well-liked technique of controlling good house units: Zigbee, Wi-Fi, and Z-Wave. There are simply too many nice good house merchandise geared up with Z-Wave radios to disregard that platform.
That mentioned, any Echo good speaker might be an important accent in a sensible house, even when it doesn’t perform because the central controller. In my own residence, a Vivint Smart Home system controls my mild switches, ceiling fan controllers, thermostat, good locks, safety cameras, storage door openers, and even motorized window shades. I can management all these units with voice instructions because of the Echo good audio system I’ve sprinkled round my house. What’s extra, I can do the identical with some good house merchandise that Vivint doesn’t instantly help—Lutron Caséta lighting and ceiling-fan controllers, Lutron Serena window shades, and multi-color Philips Hue good bulbs—for instance. In this respect, the Echo serves as a kind of lingua franca—a bridge linking the a number of good house techniques that I depend on, nearly no matter platform.
Bottom line
The Echo Studio isn’t an audiophile loudspeaker, however it’s an superior speaker for the value. In phrases of networked good audio system, the $200 Sonos One is the Studio’s closest competitor. It’s not almost as highly effective, however Sonos has the very best multi-room audio ecosystem in the marketplace, and Sonos presents a conveyable speaker—the Move—that Amazon has no actual reply for. In phrases of good speaker chops, the Sonos One might be configured with both Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
The Google Home Max, in the meantime, presents larger constancy than the Echo Studio, nevertheless it prices $100 extra and isn’t a great match for properties which have settled on Alexa as their digital assistant of selection.
Just don’t purchase the Echo Studio if what you’re actually searching for is a great house hub. You’ll be higher served by a stand-alone system that doesn’t minimize you off from probably the most fashionable good house ecosystems in the marketplace.