Amazon Echo review: combined speaker, voice assistant and smart-home controller

Hit US voice-controlled speaker brings Alexa assistant to British homes with third-party app support, good sound and fantastic voice recognition

Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled smart speaker is finally available in the UK, but was the wait worth it?

The Echo is one of the first devices with Amazon’s voice assistant – a rival to Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana – which allows you to control music playback just by speaking to it and a whole lot more.

Pros: can almost always hear you, mute button electrically disconnects the mics, rotating light ring obvious, lots of third-party apps, sounds pretty good, sounds more human than any other voice assistant

Cons: can’t always answer the question, always-listening object in your house, doesn’t support multiple user calendars or personal information, only one Spotify or Amazon music account can be linked at any one time