I’ve reviewed the Amazon Echo range for an incredible six years now, all the way back to the Echo Dot 2nd Gen, and have personally seen their progression in the tech world as an innovator of their tech device that constantly improves, plus it never loses any of the quality or features they’ve incorporated along that journey.

Recently, I’ve been assessing the relatively new Echo Pop, another one of Amazon’s smart home devices that uses the talents of Alexa. This device appears to take everything they’ve learned and developed with the Echo Dot range – and their 4th Gen is a particularly brilliant all-rounder – but now they’ve visually slicked it diagonally in half, yet it seems keep the good stuff.

If you’ve not picked up an Echo before, I wanted to give you a little rundown of what they offer. As a general ‘what is it,’ it’s a tiny home assistant that’s activated by you saying the word ‘Alexa…’ followed by whatever your question is. You can ask them to play music, audiobooks, and podcasts, or dive into the endless worlds of Amazon Music, Spotify, or Apple Music. You can ask her (you can change the voice, but ours is always with the default) any question in the world really, you can set alarms, ask to check the weather, read the latest news, check football scores and beyond.

You can also ask Alexa to switch on/off smart device lights, and set the thermostat if you’ve got a smart heating device in your house. They can even make calls for you, but I’d find that’s less likely as a regular feature that most use (due to the existence of the phone I’d say). As well as all these things, Alexa can also setup games for you – to pass the time – such as Pointless, or let you take on various music quizzes and loads, loads more.

The Echo Pop is a really compact smart speaker that’d fit in absolutely anywhere. With this one, it’s placed in the living room, but we’ve also got an Echo Dot 4th Gen upstairs and they can be connected, you can play music through both at the same time or check timers, etc, wherever you are in the house. Oh, and also connect to the speaker via Bluetooth, if you wanted to play music through it via your own design. You can also choose your own colour, as it ranges through Charcoal, Glacial White, Lavender Bloom or Midnight Teal. Which is nice!

For those concerned about privacy, the Echo Pop has layers of privacy control and projection: You can turn the microphone off, that’s otherwise always on, and it disconnects the mini microphones inside. And, finally, what about the speakers you ask? The little helper has a 49.5mm front-firing speaker and it’s loud, clear, and great for whatever you need – none of that nasty fuzzing that used to be common place.

One more thing, you say? What about sustainability? Well, Amazon have worked impressively to get this sorted with their newer products – and they tell us the Echo Pop is made from 100% post-consumer recycled yarn and aluminium from 80% recycled aluminium, which is kinda crazy. Plus, that 99% of its packaging is made of wood fibre-based materials from responsibly managed forests or recycled sources. I mean, if one of the biggest companies in the world can do it, we all can collectively – and that’s important.

So, from weather to radio, to music streaming to podcasts, to alarms and gaming, Amazon keep the superiority coming with the Echo Pop, it’s also at an affordable cost for an incredibly useful home device that certainly makes our day-to-day a lot easier for numerous purposes! Recommended? Very easily.

You can pick up the Echo Pop from this link*: https://amzn.to/4cYwK6E

*this is an affiliate link but this is my own review and opinion from the gifted device