$14.99 Buy now Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen) review: How is Alexa? Not only does it look more stylish, but on a technical level, it now boasts a 1.6in speaker inside, compared to the original’s 0.6in tweeter. The Echo Dot maintains that raison d'etre but improves things along the way for people who don’t want to connect it to another sound system. The reason for this seemingly contradictory statement is that although the original Echo Dot didn’t have much of a speaker at all, it had a 3.5mm audio jack in the back, letting owners connect it to any other sound system, whether it cost £10 or £10,000. The Echo Dot (3rd gen) is confusingly both Amazon’s entry-level device in this space and the pick for audiophiles everywhere. A virtual assistant – in this case Alexa – listens for the wake word, and will follow the instructions that follow, be that playing an album, telling you the weather or giving you a news update. Smart speakers, for those that don’t know, are speakers that can be operated by the voice.

READ NEXT: These are our favourite smart speakers Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen) review: What you need to know It's the best budget smart speaker you can buy. The Echo Dot (3rd gen) is a masterclass in making everything better, without hiking the price in the process. Just as its predecessor did it when it was launched back in 2016 it squeezes all the voice-driven smarts of a full-blown Echo into a device that fits in your palm but, unlike that device, its sound quality is good enough that you can listen to it without wincing. The Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen) achieves the seemingly impossible.

Echo dot 3rd gen