Amazon surprised us all with the launch of the Echo Spot, a new device that adds to its catalog of smart speakers, but revives a format that many of us thought was practically extinct: the bedside alarm clock. And the truth is that after reviewing what the proposal consists of, we may find ourselves facing the return of a type of device that could have a more than interesting reception from its potential users.

Its design is primarily reminiscent of the Echo Pop, the entry point to Amazon’s family of smart speakers with integrated Alexa. Now, although they both share the appearance of a half-sphere with a cutout at the base for support, the main difference of this Echo Spot is that, as you can see, its front is divided into two parts, the lower (slightly smaller than the upper) in which we see the grill behind which the speaker itself is placed, and the upper one, in which we find the screen.

Its function is nothing more than to show exactly the information we expect from a device of this type, i.e. date and time as well as weather information, for which it offers several designs of dials. Now this is only part of its functionality, because it will also show us information about music (is compatible with major streaming music services) that we play on it, notes, reminders and other notifications. Of course, we won’t be able to use the Echo Spot to play multimedia content or make video calls.

It has three buttons on the top, one to disable the integrated microphones and two to control the sound volume. However, as you might have guessed It was designed to be controlled primarily with Alexa, to the extent that it is the only way to interact with the device and its functions. This of course makes it a very interesting option for those households that have deployed a network of connected smart home devices controlled by Alexa.

In terms of connectivity, it has Dual band Wi-Fi (2.4 and 5 GHz) and supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards. He has too Bluetooth with A2DP, so we can connect it to a smartphone and play its music, and also configure the Echo Spot to use another wireless speaker to play music. Its operation is supported by a SoC MediaTek MT8516 Accompanied one gigabyte of RAM and 8 gigabytes of eMMC storagemore than enough for what we expect from a device with these features.

In an age where mobile phones have almost completely replaced bedside alarm clocks, this Echo Spot is a bit of a risky bet on Amazon’s part, but its smart screen, speaker function, Alexa integration and the ability to create multiple actions, such as turning on the bedroom light, turn it on gradually. when the alarm clock goes off to wake us up, it seems to me personally very interesting suggestion.

The Echo Spot alarm clock speaker is now on sale on Amazon and although its normal price will be 94.99 euros, from today until the days of Amazon it is reduced to 54.99 euros.